Status of Women committee  For communities to…? Please complete your sentence.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely, because we brought them here. The government brought them here through our immigration policies. We're using these policies to build Canada. We should not abandon people after bringing them here, either for economic reasons or humanitarian reasons.

Status of Women committee  Girls are very interested in relationships. So what we try to do is have the demographic profile of the facilitator fit that of the girls or the boys.

Status of Women committee  The young immigrant women we serve are in larger numbers than men, and that's because it's easier for women to ask for help. I have an immigrant women's program that is matched up with iSisters technology. We provide two levels of computer training to immigrant women. They just

Status of Women committee  Yes, they are. In fact, one of the reasons we had the groups in the schools was that the students felt isolated. There's subtle bullying and racism. You'll see that there isn't a lot of mixing. The students felt isolated. For example, at one school we have a group of largely Nepa

Status of Women committee  I'm sorry, I'm actually talking about two programs. The career mentoring program is with adults, but the immigrant and refugee youth program is for the 13- to 18-year-old child in school.

Status of Women committee  We work with high schools, and right now we're at four high schools. It's usually the high-risk child, the child who looks like he or she is going to drop out, the child who's fighting, so it involves both boys and girls. The group meets for 10 to 14 weeks. The environment of th

Status of Women committee  There are slightly more boys than girls, and that is because it was funded—

Status of Women committee  Okay.

Status of Women committee  Okay. OCISO works with the educational system to actually fine-tune what's already there to accommodate immigrant and refugee youth. One of the other programs I wanted to mention, which is quite successful, is our career mentoring program.

Status of Women committee  This program provides matches between internationally trained professionals and Canadian counterparts. Together, they help the newcomer manoeuvre through the Canadian job market. This is a very successful program and recently we received a small amount of money to actually replic

Status of Women committee  I have some notes here. The program has actually been going for about five years. We have worked with 200 Canadian mentors and matched them with internationally trained immigrants. What we try to do is match sectors and even job descriptions. The mentors share their knowledge o

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity to speak before the committee about ways to improve the economic prospects of Canadian girls. My name is Bertha Mo. I am the manager of the counselling program at OCISO, the Ottawa Community Immigration Service