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August 9, 2023- Toronto, ON – Today, Google.org has committed a $2.5 million dollar grant to NPower Canada to upskill 5,000 underserved job-seekers with the technical and employability skills required for in-demand, future focused digital careers.
The grant will enable NPower Canada to integrate and deliver Google Career Certificates as a core component of its virtually-delivered workforce development programs, upskilling diverse job seekers from coast to coast for meaningful and sustainable digital careers.
This new grant represents a continuation of Google.org’s support for NPower Canada, which began in July 2020. Over the past three years, job seekers have been enrolling in one of NPower Canada’s core scholarship-based programs which integrate the Google IT Support Professional Certificate and the Google UX Design Certificate into its offerings, as well as NPower’s advanced alumni offerings, leveraging Google’s IT Automation with Python, Project Management, and Data Analytics certifications. Within six months of graduating from the program, 80% of NPower Canada’s graduates are employed and/or enrolled in further education.
“Since 2020, Google.org has committed $4.5 million dollars to NPower Canada, supporting over 4,000 job seekers from underserved communities, and we look forward to expanding on this support today” says Sabrina Geremia, VP & Country Managing Director, Google Canada. “NPower Canada has a proven track record of providing Canadians with the skills needed to match the demands of today’s tech workforce, along with wraparound support like resume building and interview preparation to ensure students are successfully landing jobs.”
Olena Kotelnykova, a mother of two who fled from the war in Ukraine, is one of the NPower Canada graduates who earned the Google IT Support Professional Certificate and launched her career in Canada.
“In one day, everything changed – the war had begun. In one day we lost everything we had, everything we invested into, everything we loved, built and hoped for a new life in a safer place,” shared Kotelnykova.
Olena enrolled in NPower Canada’s program in September 2022 in Nova Scotia, shortly after she and her family arrived in Canada. She learned the fundamentals of IT and built new social and professional networks, beginning to build a life for herself here. Before she even had graduated from the program, Olena landed a role as a Financial Clerk in the Town of Berwick, a first step towards her dream career of becoming a Data Analyst.
“Olena is but one example of the impressive and resilient NPower Canada graduates who have been able to launch a new career thanks to our free workforce development program in partnership with Google,” said Julia Blackburn, CEO, NPower Canada. “We are so proud of the impact that we have been able to achieve together, and even more excited about this new chapter with Google.”
For more information on the Google Career Certificates visit g.co/certificates-canada. To find out more information about the scholarships visit NPower Canada’s website.
About NPower Canada
NPower Canada is a charitable organization that launches underserved youth and adults, including people with disabilities, BIPOC and LGBTQ2S+ individuals, into meaningful & sustainable careers in technology. Through its free in-demand digital and professional skills training programs, NPower Canada connects job seekers to employers who are looking for junior IT/tech talent. NPower Canada has grown from enrolling 87 learners in 2015 to 2,500 in 2022, scaling within Ontario and expanding nationally to Alberta in 2019, Nova Scotia and British Columbia in 2021, Quebec in 2022, and Manitoba in 2023.
About Google Canada
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. As a global technology leader, Google’s innovations in web search and advertising have made its website a top internet property and its brand one of the most recognized in the world. Google Canada has offices in Waterloo, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa with employees working on teams across Engineering, AI Research, Sales and Marketing.
About Google.org
Google’s philanthropy brings the best of Google to help solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges combining funding, innovation, and technical expertise to support underserved communities and provide opportunity for everyone. We engage nonprofits and social enterprises who make a significant impact on the communities they represent, and whose work has the potential to produce meaningful change. We want a better world, faster — and we believe in leveraging technology and applying scalable data-driven innovation to move the needle.
SOURCE Google Canada
Media Contact: Wendy Manton, [email protected]
