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 of the Canadian workplace, cultures, support network development, and advise on job-search prospects. Over 60% of mentees exit the program with jobs in their field, and another 15% pursue further education toward attaining employment goals.
We actually do a lot of informal mentoring at OCISO. I was talking to one of my colleagues about his Burmese community, and he's been one of the supporters of our group counselling program. I always wondered, because we hear that newcomers definitely are not interested in counselling, whether it is group or individual, and he said, “Listen, you have these incredible university graduates. Look at Renée, she has her master's degree and she's been working five years for you. You have Christy and you have Chris and all these are students who have actually manoeuvred their way through university. They're very successful. They did an internship with you and now they're running your support groups. I want my Karen kids to actually spend those eight to 14 weeks with your interns. They're mentors. We don't see you as doing group counselling. What you're running is a group mentoring program.”
I thought, wow.... Because many of our programs are actually designed for individual groups of refugees and immigrants, we're able to tweak them and provide things we might not have thought of. In fact, the immigrant and refugee youth program on the street is actually called career pathways. Because these are also high-risk kids, we don't want to stigmatize them by saying we're really doing mental health counselling.