Apatisiwin

Goals & Objectives

To provide strength, promote self reliance, enhance the unity of our people and improve the opportunities for meaningful employment through self-determined activities and building employment and training capacity, now and seven generations into the future.

The objectives are:

Administer programme intervention dollars to Employment Units and Friendship Centres to fund eligible clients for employment and training programmes.
Match eligible clients with employers, promoting a growing number of motivated job qualified individuals ready to start careers.
Build relationships with community colleges, private training institutes and businesses across the province to create training and employment opportunities for Ontario's urban Aboriginal people.
Provide employment and training opportunities to Aboriginal clients who are not eligible through First Nation, Inuit or Metis agreements.

Programme Summary

Apatisiwin offers several programmes with 15 designed for general access and 6 designed for urban Aboriginal youth. Apatisiwin has funding programmes which pay tuitions and provide financial support to clients enrolled in training. Apatisiwin will also pay wage subsidies to qualified employers and employees. Employment Counsellors work with eligible client's to determine which programme is most appropriate.

Focus on Success

The Apatisiwin network has worked hard serving the needs of each of their communities. As a result 1,451 people were able to be served. Apatisiwin has increased the number of funded training interventions by 28%. Last year Apatisiwin funded 195 clients, this year we were able to fund 698 clients. 544 of those clients successfully completed their training. 109 of those interventions are still in progress. 362 funded clients became employed after the completion of the intervention. These are significant outcomes for Apatisiwin. We will continue to work towards increasing these numbers and linking them to the labour shortages and assisting clients in obtaining meaningful employment related to the training interventions.

Development

The administration of the Apatisiwin programme has increasingly been reported as having an affect on the day to day operations of Apatisiwin.

Of concern to Apatisiwin is how the funding formula is distributed between EI at 67% and CRF at 33%. The distribution is based on census data where the majority of Aboriginal people in Canada are residing in urban areas, have greater access to employment and should they become unemployed will result in being eligible for EI. Apatisiwin will have to increase its outreach efforts to locate EI eligible clients to meet its EI targets which will enable us to determine whether this is an equitable distribution of CRF and EI funds.

By providing training to employment units on the apprenticeship process, increasing the exposure to the demand for skilled workers and concentrating in this area, results should improve.

Purchase of training continues to be the most demanded programme among clients. These clients are in the best position to move towards employment that is linked to the training. As well clients who have been funded for multiple interventions are positioned to become employed in their career choice. The provision of training continues to be the easiest part of the strategy.

By streamlining the operations specifically for financial reporting and the community planning process, Apatisiwin has been able to improve the management and delivery of the program.