The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau has recently announced the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) as a methodology to support the graduate and post-secondary students by offering them paid service for helping their communities to fight COVID-19.
This comes as a major development for the recent graduates and post-secondary students who are facing shortages of jobs, co-op and internship programs recently. As not-for-profits are witnessing an increased demand for volunteers to serve the Canadians to respond to the pandemic, it becomes an opportunity for both the parties.
The CSSG will provide one-time payment to these volunteers that can be anything between CAD $1,000 and CAD $5,000, depending on the number of hours that they have served. The students can look for not-for-profit organizations at I Want to Help platform which has been launched recently.
Apart from this grant, the Prime Minister has also highlighted several other activities in place to help young Canadians to find paid jobs and get the skills they need to start with their careers, namely
- Support to additional 20,000 job placements high demand sectors with an investment of CAD $186 million into the Student Work Placement Program
- Canada Summer Jobs Program to create 10,000 new job placements for young people of 15 to 30 years of age
- 5,000 new internships through Mitacs for college and university students across Canada with small and medium-sized industries and partnership with new industries
- An additional funding of CAD $40 million into the Digital Skills for Youth (DS4Y) program to help post-secondary students gain the required professional work experience.
- 3,500 new jobs and internship opportunities to be created through the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy
- Computers for Schools Plus (CFS+) program to get a funding of CAD $6.7 million so that young people can learn advanced digital skills through paid and practical work internships
- Business + Higher Education Roundtable (BHER) to create 5,000 to 10,000 more work-integrated learning opportunities.
Undoubtedly, Canada has always stood up for its student fraternity. At present, when the country is facing multiple challenges, it has come up with a smart solution that would address the dual issue of fewer paid opportunities for students as well as shortage of volunteers to serve the communities in Canada. Not only the students will earn, but they will also gain valuable experience. This move comes as a great relief for both the students and the local communities in the crisis situation.
