Past Projects

Collective Interchange is proud that this project provided the research that built PRIME, a career development tool used throughout Newfoundland and Labrador and other parts of Canada. PRIME provides the structure and the flexibility needed by career and employment services to engage people in a meaningful, collaborative, person-centered and strength-based exploration of a person's career development strengths and needs. PRIME is rooted in over 10 years of research, conducted in partnership with frontline career service providers working across diverse settings in Newfoundland and Labrador. This project brought together career professionals serving diverse clients with researchers from the Canadian Career Development Foundation, Goss Gilroy and ARMS to rigorously test PRIME and analyze the data gathered through its use in service delivery. This project took a regional approach to addressing national and international challenges currently faced by the career/employment service delivery ecosystem and its funders. It resulted in a strong validation of the PRIME approach and its capacity to be used to demonstrate statistically and clinically significant positive impacts of career services across 36 meaningful outcome indicators related to readiness, skill, health and well-being, and capacity to success sustainably in learning and/or work.

The Jigsaw project resulted in the creation of an online resource called Weconomie.ca. This community-owned portal equips women and nonprofit organizations with free and low-cost resources supporting entrepreneurship, social enterprise, and co-operatives. This national project was lead by a collective of three women's enterprises located in different Canadian provinces. Collective Interchange partnered with a number of organizations in the St. John's area to ensure that this province helped shape weconomie.ca. Funding for this project was provided by Status of Women Canada and the Women's Economic Council (WEC) engaged the Collective Interchange to champion and lead this project.

Her Own Boss! is a national action research project with the goal of increasing service providers' understanding of the needs of newcomer women exploring self-employment. This exciting project, delivered in St. John's, NL, Ottawa, ON and Vancouver, BC metro regions, provides free opportunities for Visible minority newcomer women to explore community resources. Collective Interchange is the delivery partner for the province of NL on this Women's Economic Council (WEC) project. We want to recognize the Multicultural Women's Organization of Newfoundland and Labrador who is the local anchor organization. Over a two year period, stakeholders will contribute to research while working together to pilot new resources that can better serve visible minority newcomer women.

New World, New Way is a 3-year capacity building project, funded by the Government of Canada's Department of Women and Gender Equality. This exciting project is a collaborative learning experience that provides opportunities for immigrant women and service providers to work together to explore solutions on how to address the different barriers impacting accessibility and use of available resources by immigrant women. Through this collaboration, the project involves piloting new resources, policies, and practices that aim to better support immigrant women's access to programs and information regarding business and employment. As part of the New World, New Way project, Collective Interchange has been delivering first-language workshops tailored to immigrant women's needs within the local Spanish-speaking community, focusing on digital literacy skills, confidence, communications and other skills for work. We have delivered these workshops in partnership with various local and national service providers. This initiative is aimed at raising immigrant women's awareness about existing services and facilitating their connections with service providers in the community.

Our Collective Interchange Communications Program is an inclusive, capacity building program that provides employment development opportunities for women, particularly those who may face systematic barriers to employment. This program is part of our effort to put one of the co-op principles, Care for the Community, into action. The communications program provides work experience to the members, and uses peer mentorship and collaborative practices. This program allows us to bring together young people from a wide variety of educational fields and ethnic origins to create a team with many different valuable perspectives and lived experiences. Through funding provided by Venture for Canada, we were able to create employment opportunities for interns in this program.