July 11, 2019 ‒ St. John’s, NL ‒ Canada is supporting the Association for New Canadians to help newcomers better integrate into the community by improving employment services.
In partnership with Academy Canada, a local culinary training institution, and the Restaurant Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Association for New Canadians has developed a social enterprise food truck called Global Eats. The Global Eats truck will provide training, mentorship and work experience to 2 groups of 12 refugee participants.
The participants, including youth and women in the St. John’s Metro area, will develop their employability and entrepreneurship skills within the food service industry. The food truck made its first appearance in the community at a special open house on June 19 in honour of Refugee Week, offering a sampling menu to attendees.
A dedicated Service Delivery Improvements fund was created to improve and innovate with better ways to deliver services to and meet the needs of newcomers and support their integration into Canada.
Quotes
“The Association for New Canadians has been providing high-quality settlement services for newcomers to Newfoundland and Labrador for more than 40 years. Finding new and better ways to help newcomers succeed in their journey benefits all Canadians”.
– The Honourable Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
“Thanks to the dedication of local service providers like the Association for New Canadians, this project and others like it will improve our understanding of newcomer needs and support their successful integration into Canadian communities.”
– Nick Whalen, Member of Parliament for St. John’s East
“The Global Eats Food Truck Project is an innovative training program designed to support the career goals of immigrants interested in working in the food services industry or establishing their own business. The individuals working on this project will not only have the opportunity to share their culinary knowledge with the local community, but also to learn the language and skills necessary to contribute to our province’s burgeoning restaurant sector”.
– Megan Morris, Association for New Canadians Executive Director
Quick facts
- The goal of this project is to help facilitate newcomers’ labour market attachment and language acquisition by providing the knowledge and training required to work in the Canadian food industry and/or establish their own food-related business.
- This project is receiving $570,000 as part of Service Delivery Improvements (SDI) funding, a dedicated stream within the Settlement Program of almost $150 million over 5 years.
- Following the first expression of interest process for SDI launched in fall 2017, more than 100 projects are now funded across the country.
- There are 7 streams under the SDI funding:
- language acquisition
- employment
- youth supports
- harnessing volunteers and supporting capacity-building in the settlement sector
- pay for performance
- newcomer well-being and programming to support vulnerable clients
- research and analysis to drive innovation and understand the user experience