The Casual Work Experience Program (CWE) is offered at 10 of our partner schools across Canada. CWE students have the option of working in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Victoria – or out at a resort in the Rockies, the BC Islands or Interior, or in resort areas of Ontario.
This program is designed specifically for ESL students, giving them a chance to improve their English quickly. Nearly all ESL students in this program self report a significant increase in their English comprehension skills within 1 month, more than two thirds report a significant increase in their speaking ability over the same period.
The resort placement option in this program stands out for the fastest increase in speaking skills and for a host of other benefits, most importantly shared subsidized staff accommodation. Staff accommodation typically costs less than $20 per day – often much less. The shared aspect helps students adapt to being far from where they studied, and gives them an immediate social life where they can practice their English even more.
As for the accommodation itself, we recently did a tour of staff accommodation at one of our host companies in the Rockies. You can see that tour below:
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Catching up on video testimonials. Here’s one from fall 2011 that we’re just posting up now. This is a student from a university in Newfoundland who we brought here to Vancouver to do an internship in Microbiology.
Here she is talking a little bit about her placement:
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We paid a visit to a food engineering intern of ours today. He’s out interning with a beverage producer in Metro Vancouver. Here’s a bit of our talk with him about what he’s been doing and how he feels about his internship goals:
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NB: for all new videos we do, we’re using our corporate logo and brand identity (hence the mention of ‘Experience Education’ in the title slide).
Just back from hosting an internship fair today at our partner university, FDU. Great turnout, and a lot of excellent feedback from students and from companies. Below you can find a few quick snapshots we took during the event.
A few weeks back we spoke to Louisa and her host company supervisor to ask her how her events planning internship was going. We naturally took some video – you can see her host over here. Louisa’s report is below:
Louisa’s internship was done as part of our Student Internship Program (SIP). The SIP places students in unpaid internships in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Internships are available in dozens and dozens of fields, from chemical engineering, to wood technology, to events planning. For more info on the SIP for Canadian university students, please visit: www.vancouverinternships.ca/sip.html . For information on the SIP for international students, please click here.
Downtown Banff
Last week, I had the privilege of going to Banff, Alberta to visit the students in our Casual Work Experience Resort program. The best words to describe my time there are “chilly” and “colourful,” because the leaves in Alberta are turning yellow and red even faster than here in Vancouver. It made the drive through the Rocky Mountains even more beautiful than usual. I had brought a good sweater, too, so the cold was no problem. In fact, it was kind of nice to bundle up in the mountains.
The first thing I wanted to do when I was in Banff was say hi to one of our hosts. She runs a major hotel right in the heart of town and one of our students had been working for her all summer. I had a chance to talk to the student, her name is Pon, for a few minutes:
Next, I went to visit a student named Renata who had just started her work term in Banff. She had been working in her hotel for less than two weeks, but you would never know it. She got along really well with her host and her coworkers, and she was extremely quick at cleaning rooms! There was a system to everything, and she was going to be a pro in no time. She also seemed to know her way around the gigantic hotel she worked in, which looked like a big disjointed maze to me.
Renata at her casual work placement
Most students in the Resort stream of the Casual Work Experience program get to live in subsidized staff housing. So after her shift, Renata took me to see where she lives. Her accommodation is about a 15 minute walk from her hotel right in the quiet, residential part of Banff. Once we got further from the tall hotels and closer to her apartment, we could see the mountains all around us.
Staff Accommodation
I think she could probably see them from every window in her place. (Part of the joy of living in a National Park). Her kitchen was cute, there was a lot of space in the living room, and her roommate seemed really nice. But that also could have been because she’d gotten to sleep all day.
It seemed like everyone in Banff was settled in and happy in their jobs, and so my work there was done. I went on my way and wandered the cozy town. When I was walking down a side street, I came across a couple deer outside of a church.
Getting too close to a deer.
I tried my best not to scare them away, and in the end they let me get as close as a metre away! It was a very serene experience until one of them looked up and stared me in the face. That’s when I decided it was time to move away from the wildlife. It was starting to rain anyway, so I ducked inside and got myself some prime Alberta beef.
