Celebrating Project Rise Fall Cohort

Project Rise

Last week, we celebrated our Project Rise fall cohort graduates with a graduation ceremony. Our Project Rise coordinator, Emily, recognized every grad with a certificate and kind words about their strengths and what makes them unique.

The grads all spoke highly of the program and their experience with the training portion, the certificates they were able to acquire, the work placements and of course Emily who supported each one throughout the program.

As part of their celebration for completing the program, the grads enjoyed a few hours of bowling. I was invited to check in and see how they are doing and how their work placements are going.

Clay has been working at Growing Opportunities farm and found out that his work placement has been extended from 6 to 12 weeks thanks to the Future Leaders grant.

Melody, Andrew and one other grad are all staying on as employees at the Unitarian Shelter through NFLA (Nanaimo Family Life Association). As part of their job, they check in with clients at the shelter and make sure that everybody is okay.

Andrew and his partner, former clients of ICCS who lived in one of our supportive housing programs, have just moved into their own place!

Melanie works at Foodshare 3 days a week as kitchen assistant. As part of her job, she takes care of Monday Lunch, Kids Get Cooking and the Food Box program. She loves working at Nanaimo Foodshare!

It was so inspiring to connect with the grads. The future looks bright for them and we couldn’t be more proud!

Project Rise is a program of Island Crisis Care Society (ICCS) aimed to deliver pre-employment and employment skills training and work placement opportunities to people who have experienced homelessness but are now ready to re-integrate more fully into independence and community life.

Please go to our program page to find out more and to apply.

(In photo from left to right: Melanie, Clay and Emily)