With the generous support of the United Way of Peterborough and District’s Innovation Fund, we are piloting a new collaborative to train 14 women so that they can access meaningful and stable employment, and become food secure.
Women who are already strong cooks, but who are facing barriers to employment due to migration, poverty, criminal records, or discrimination, will have the opportunity to scale up their cooking and gain employment readiness skills in order to access secure and meaningful jobs within the food industry. We know that the food industry generates precarious jobs. Therefore, we plan to equip participants with the tools and knowledge they need to access employment in areas of the food industry that pay living wages.
To help participants to succeed at accessing higher paid jobs, we will integrate knowledge and skills for preparing plant-based meals into the regular culinary training. Along with these specialized culinary skills, the training will also include soft skills development such as communicating for success, professional workplace expectations, employment rights, and health and safety in the workplace.
When we ran the Newcomer Kitchen in partnership with the New Canadians Centre from 2017-2019, we found we were able to accomplish so much more together than separately. Based on those learnings, we will anchor this new project in an even larger collaborative framework by bringing together agencies, employment resources, and members of the private sector.
Collaborators include:
Nourish (YWCA Peterborough Haliburton)
New Canadians Centre
Elizabeth Fry Society of Peterborough
Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre
Employment Planning and Counselling
Peterborough Public Health
Interested in mentoring?
Are you a woman who has succeeded in her field, but faced barriers to employment due to migration, poverty, criminal records, or discrimination? We are particularly interested in hearing from women from the food industry, but are open to mentors from other sectors as well.
Email us for more information: info@ywcapeterborough.org.
