Video Credits: Chris Richards, St. Clair Mediaplex Intern
Windsor, ON – On Friday, February 22 at 9:30 a.m. during the annual “Power of Your Potential” conference, Workforce WindsorEssex hosted a “Living Library” featuring local young professionals in promising sectors at the University of Windsor.
Led by students from the Faculty of Education, this conference aims at enabling each attendee to reach their self-potential. Approximately 300 students from high schools across Windsor-Essex will learn from a series of workshops to become more marketable, employable and increase their awareness of career paths specific to our region.
In addition to learning about financial literacy and free local community services, the “Living Library” workshop will showcase promising people in promising careers.
Why a Living Library?
Our economy is rapidly changing and we wanted an interesting way to show students what that looks like. Because our work is often text-based (i.e. documents and research), the “Living Library” was an interactive way of showcasing the information we’ve been collecting. The concept of “Living Library” (or “Human Library”, as it’s often called) happens all over the world but our “books” feature the changing career paths of seven young professionals. Attending students can now put a face to growing industries and see careers they might not have expected when they think of “work” in Windsor-Essex. The research includes statistics found in our Labour Market Report and our Promising Sectors and Occupations Windsor-Essex 2012-2015, which identifies nine sectors and 55 occupations that will be in demand in the next three years. This report was released in early March 2012.
BACKGROUNDER:
In June 2010, WFWE released their Youth Labour Market Plan- looking at how our region’s youth received labour market information.
“The vision of the Youth Labour Market Information Plan is to ensure that youth are getting accurate and timely information about local labour market conditions on emerging occupations.”
As a follow-up to this study, WFWE invited several local youth service providers to act as mentors in the organization of a youth-led conference.
A youth-led strategic committee was formed with students young people from W.F. Herman Secondary School and volunteers from the Teen Health Centre’s Kids Alliance program and New Beginnings program.
In 2011, we partnered with the Faculty of Education’s Leadership Experience for Academic Directions (L.E.A.D.) program, the youth-led committee organized unique ways of presenting the day’s material to attending students in a meaningful way.