CEWIL Resource Hub: Indigenous WIL at St. Thomas University

Key success factors

• Future Ready Wabanaki has shifted its focus to a client-centred model for placements, one in which they sometimes ask employers to create positions for students or connect with students directly to pair them with placements. Adopting this model has helped Future Ready Wabanaki better understand students’ needs, goals, and barriers, and makes it easier to pitch opportunities (and students) to employers. Employers still have the liberty to choose whether to bring students in for a placement. 
• Future Ready Wabanaki is a co-curricular program, so experiences aren’t guided by a professor and credit isn’t granted. When positions are part-time and during the school year, the program endeavors to keep them at a manageable level of commitment.  
• The program has enough funding to pay all its participants above minimum wage, and it’s even helped some students during the summer. The funding is made available to employers in the form of wage subsidies. 

Unique characteristics

• Future Ready Wabanaki is exclusively for Indigenous students. 
• The program is improving student resiliency and confidence, thanks in large part to a consistent effort to remove barriers to meaningful EL (including unexpected or non-traditional barriers like transportation, clothing costs, childcare, etc.) Future Ready Wabanaki’s student-centred approach means focusing on collaboration between the student, placement, and the institution, and accommodates flexibility in terms of hours, communication mediums, etc. This flexibility is often particularly beneficial when working with students from underrepresented groups, i.e. Indigenous students. 

Challenges

• Future Ready Wabanaki is working on increasing the program’s awareness. It’s still a new program and has plenty of room for additional uptake. 
• A recurring challenge involves getting students to use the services available to them instead of just forcing them to apply to what’s available. Students are encouraged to take advantage of Future Ready Wabanaki’s client-centred approach and find placements that are right for them, but adoption of this model requires trust and flexibility. 

Resources

• Future Ready Wabanaki

Student Testimonials

A student who participated in the program remarked that he no longer had to work late nights as a bar bouncer the work he was doing with an independent web-based television production business, his ideal placement as a Journalism student.  

Another mature student who has young children was able to eliminate the barrier to her accessing experiences related to her career goals: childcare. When doing her student intake, it came up that she was fearing being able to take up an internship that would help her explore career opportunities because she would have to be away from her children and hire a childcare provider. After looking at other childcare subsidies she did not qualify for, our office was able to subsidize a portion of her childcare costs on top of her wages, and she accessed an opportunity in the summer that increased her confidence and gave her insights into an industry she had not considered before.  

Another Indigenous student wanted to improve her chances of getting into the post-degree education program and benefitted from Future Ready Wabanaki funds by working on writing a children’s book that translates alphabet letters in Mi'kmaq to English, accompanied by her artwork. Another indigenous student was set to start a placement a women’s transition house, but after her interview the employer was so impressed that they decided to hire her entirely on their own, without Future Ready Wabanaki funds, in order to be able to keep her longer than what was initially proposed. The employer effectively used our experiential learning office as an employee recruitment service.

Key characteristics

• Type: Indigenous WIL
• Year program was established: 2019
• Number of students per year: 15
• Number of employers/partners per year: 11
• Programs/academic disciplines participating: Social Sciences, Humanities and related fields 
• Duration of experience: 4 months (full-time), 120 hours (part-time) 
• Submitted by: Clara Santacruz