Through our partnership with Reach Child and Youth Development Society (REACH), we’ve learned that teenagers with special needs can often have difficulty gaining meaningful work experience. 

As part of a new initiative to offer work experience opportunities to students and members of our community, we recently introduced a pilot work experience program. Our main objective when we started the pilot program was to match our business needs with students’ skills and create meaningful community partnerships.

The program began with one South Delta Secondary School student, who was introduced to us through REACH. He joined our Facilities Management team in July, working a couple of days per week over the summer. We paired him with one of our long standing Facilities Management team members as a mentor and it went so well that we are keeping him on as a casual employee.

Another individual, who recently graduated from South Delta Secondary, was introduced to Century Group through the Solutions Employment Services of the Delta Community Living Society. She was hired to assist our Finance department with a special project in preparation for our office relocation to Surrey City Centre in January.

We’re thrilled with the success of our program so far and we look forward to collaborating with more community organizations in the communities where we do business going forward.