The New Brunswick Mentor Apprentice Program’s 1000 Mentors in 1000 Days Challenge is poised to surpass its goal.
The initiative, which sees tradespeople trained to become mentors, is now just over 500 days in and they’ve already trained over 600 mentors and over 540 apprentices.
Chief Mentoring Officer with NB-MAP Gina O’Rourke McKay says we have in Atlantic Canada, particularly in New Brunswick, one of the oldest construction workforces in the country. She says we have a ton of deep experience, but:
“What’s happening is it’s leaving and we want to make sure that it’s passed on to the next generation,” says O’Rourke-McKay. “So when those next projects come along or for our existing companies that are already here that we can roll on as business as usual and we’re not losing any productivity and we’re not losing that skills knowledge.”
She also spoke about the importance of mentors.
“Somewhere along the line we’ve forgotten to tell our journeypersons that they are teachers. And so what we do is we actually bring them teaching strategies, we teach them how to communicate with the younger apprentices, really promote inclusive learning workplaces, really add that element to on the job training that’s kind of been overlooked.”
They’ve started this initiative in construction and their next phase is the automotive sector.
The milestone was marked at a meeting at the Riverside Country Club in Rothesay on Tuesday morning.
