READI to Work 

A capacity-building project to support employers with the successful attraction, settlement and retention of newcomers into rural communities. 

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About the Project

READI to Work is a training program that supports business sustainability and addresses labour shortages by teaching successful practices for the recruitment, hiring, and retention of newcomer employees. Training is done through a hybrid model with employers across rural communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan. 

In addition, this project seeks to provide newcomers to Canada and international students with the opportunity to find meaningful work placements with READI-certified employers. 

READI to Work supports employers in rural communities, newcomers, and international students. 

Funders and partners

Our Impact

This project will provide over 50 meaningful work placements for newcomers and international students while supporting over 30 rural employers with tools, resources, and information to effectively meet the needs of newcomer employees and retain staff for the long term. 

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Related Services

We help identify knowledge gaps and challenges in welcoming newcomers and create individualized training, policies and practices, and resources. 

Welcoming Inclusive Communities & Organizations

Our team works collaboratively to identify challenges in welcoming newcomers, and develop training, policies, and resources to better attract, retain and settle newcomers in rural areas.

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Building Rural Capacity to Support Newcomers

Our customizable training is tailored for service providers and municipalities. It focuses on teaching strategies to effectively meet newcomers needs and foster welcoming communities. 

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Rural Employers’ Awareness on Diversity and Inclusion (READI) Training

Elevate your business’s sustainability and tackle labour shortages head-on with our customizable training.

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Get Support

Our dedicated team is committed to supporting rural communities to help them thrive. Connect with us to explore how we can work with you.

About the Project

This project is designed to support rural communities, service providers, community-based organizations, immigrant-serving agencies, employment centres and municipalities in understanding the unique needs and barriers faced by Ukrainian evacuees settling in rural Albertan communities.   

The training will include: 

  • Background information on the situation in Ukraine, and characteristics, specific needs, and common pathways and experiences of Ukrainian evacuees;  
  • Approaches to appropriate service provision such as cultural competency and trauma-informed care; and 
  • Workshops specific to non-traditional settlement groups, such as: employment (private businesses, employment assistance and adult learning agencies), education (SWIS workers, schools), and housing (landlords, property management companies, and host families). 

The project will provide a five-part virtual training series to participants from October to December 2024.  

Click on the button to learn and Register for a FREE Train-the-Trainer Workshop Series. The deadline to register is Oct 8th at 5 PM.

Our Impact

This project is in progress. 

Funders and partners

Get Support

Our dedicated team is committed to supporting rural communities to help them thrive. Connect with us to explore how we can work with you.

About the Project

READI is a capacity-building training program created to support employers in rural communities with the successful attraction, settlement, and retention of immigrant employees. This training was done both virtually and in-person and was created to fill the gaps and challenges that employers experience in supporting or attracting newcomer employees. 

This project created a toolkit that included the teachings, information, resources, and materials developed throughout the training to further support employers across rural communities in embedding new diverse hiring practices, gaining skills to create a more welcoming workplace, and adopting inclusive policies in their organization. 

Funders and partners

  • Funder: Government of Alberta’s Settlement, Language and Integration Projects (SILP) 
  • Partner: Lethbridge Family Services (LFS) 
  • Partner: ASSIST Community Services Centre

Our Impact

This project supported over 30 rural and remote employers across north, central, and southern Alberta with resources and helped them build the capacity to meet the needs of immigrant employees, while learning best practices to create a more welcoming and inclusive organization to retain employees for the long-term.   

With the READI Toolkit, employers across Canada can access the resources and information developed to better support their organizations in meeting the needs of their newcomer employees and creating better attraction, settlement, and retention strategies to promote organizational sustainability and overall workplace inclusion. 

Working with the Rural Immigration team has been an informative and valuable experience for our group of companies, providing relevant and comprehensive information about how to best support newcomers to our small agriculture-focused communities. Their READI project, which included interactive online workshops and in-person collaborative sessions and was led by experienced trainers, offered useful resources and knowledge to help us attract, integrate, and retain newcomers. We’re grateful for their assistance and highly recommend their READI training and the helpful READI Project Toolkit to any employer seeking to grow and succeed in rural communities.

Carla Mazutinec, Project Coordinator, Sunterra

Related Services

We help identify knowledge gaps and challenges in welcoming newcomers, and create individualized training, policies and practices, and resources. 

Rural Employers’ Awareness on Diversity and Inclusion Training

Elevate your business’s sustainability and tackle labour shortages head-on with our customizable training.

Building Rural Capacity to Support Newcomers

Our customizable training is tailored for service providers and municipalities, to learn effective strategies to meet newcomers’ needs & foster welcoming communities.

Get Support

Our dedicated team is committed to supporting rural communities to help them thrive. Connect with us to explore how we can work with you.

This project was completed in 2024.

About the Project

In Our Hands was a co-operative entrepreneurship (“co-opreneurship”) program that aimed to facilitate the development of co-operative enterprises that meet the employment needs and entrepreneurial aspirations of Canadian newcomers. The goal of the project was to support newcomers to Canada through all the stages of starting and growing a co-operative business and to test the viability of co-operative entrepreneurship as an economic mobility pathway for newcomers. The pilot project ran from January 2022 to January 2024.  

This project supported newcomers and immigrants in Alberta and British Columbia who were interested in starting businesses cooperatively. 

Funders and partners

  • Our project was funded by: World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund 
  • Partner: BC- Coop Association (BCCA) 
  • Partner: Women’s Economic Council   

Our Impact

This project successfully increased awareness, interest, and literacy among participants regarding the co-operative enterprise model and co-operative development process. 

  • 300 individuals gained information about co-operatives through in-person and online information sessions 
  • 33 program applicants completed the co-ops’ 101 education through the live, in-person/online workshop or via the self-paced online Foundations Course 
  • 4 newcomer co-operatives were developed from the project:  
    • CultureLinks Co-operative with 5 members 
    • Arabian Beauty Co-operative with 10 members 
    • Shift Gears International Professionals with 4 members  
    • Winning Women Multipurpose Co-operative with 8 members 

The most valuable things I learned were “About the cooperative model, its structural governance, its guiding principles, and its impact.

Participant Feedback

Related Services

We help identify knowledge gaps and challenges in welcoming newcomers, and create individualized training, policies and practices, and resources. 

Needs Assessments and Action Plans 

Identifying the existing gaps and challenges that organizations and communities face in meeting the needs of newcomers.

Rural Employers’ Awareness on Diversity and Inclusion Training

Elevate your business’s sustainability and tackle labour shortages head-on with our customizable training.

Building Rural Capacity to Support Newcomers

Our training is custom-tailored to help service providers and municipalities learn effective strategies to meet newcomers’ needs and foster welcoming communities.

Get Support

Our dedicated team is committed to supporting rural communities to help them thrive. Connect with us to explore how we can work with you.

This project was completed in 2024.

About the Project

This project, done in partnership with an immigrant-serving agency, provided a four-part virtual training to participants to help them better attract, settle, and retain newcomers into rural communities for the long term. Upon completion of the project, a toolkit was developed to provide resources and information to rural communities across Alberta to increase their capacity to support newcomers through a rural lens.. 

This project also worked in partnership with the Alberta Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies (AAISA) to provide an online self-paced course for service providers to gain resources, tools and information to better support immigrant clients moving, settling, and staying in rural communities across Alberta.

Funders and partners

  • Funder: Government of Alberta’s Settlement, Language and Integration Projects (SILP) 
  • Funder: Alberta Association of Immigrant Serving Agencies (AAISA) 
  • Partner: ASSIST Community Services Centre  

Our Impact

This project successfully supported participants in: 

  • Recognizing the diverse barriers newcomers experience when settling in rural communities 
  • Defining key terms such as equity, diversity, inclusion, and intersectionality  
  • Understanding anti-discrimination and best practices to support a more inclusive community 
  • Explaining common frameworks and approaches for supporting newcomers, immigrants, and refugees such as anti-discrimination, anti-oppression, cultural competence, and cultural humility 
  • Identifying trauma-informed practices 
  • Examining the characteristics and approaches of welcoming and inclusive communities through a rural lens 

This course helps me better understand newcomers and how I can help them more efficiently with the tools that were presented in this course.

Participant Feedback

Related Services

We help identify knowledge gaps and challenges in welcoming newcomers, and create individualized training, policies and practices, and resources. 

Needs Assessments and Action Plans 

Identifying the existing gaps and challenges that organizations and communities face in meeting the needs of newcomers.

Rural Employers’ Awareness on Diversity and Inclusion Training

Elevate your business’s sustainability and tackle labour shortages head-on with our customizable training.

Building Rural Capacity to Support Newcomers

Our training is custom-tailored to help service providers and municipalities learn effective strategies to meet newcomers’ needs and foster welcoming communities.

Get Support

Our dedicated team is committed to supporting rural communities to help them thrive. Connect with us to explore how we can work with you.

This project was completed in 2024.

About the Project

Based on a previous work of RDN and The Centre for Civic Religious Literacy (CCRL) in Temiskaming Shores and our dialogue with the Temiskaming Shores & Area Chambers of Commerce (TSACC), we learned that employers in the region have a strong desire to welcome and recruit immigrants and refugees but are struggling with attraction and retention, and are not well-versed on how to engage with employees coming from different religious, spiritual, and non-religious backgrounds. The pilot project ran from November 2021 to May 2024. 

Funders and partners

This project is funded by:  WES Mariam Assefa Fund 

Our Partners: 
  • Centre for Civic Religious Literacy (CCRL) 
  • Religious Freedom and Business Foundation (RFBF) 
  • Temiskaming Shores & Area Chamber of Commerce (TSACC) 
  • City of Temiskaming Shores  
  • Keepers of the Circle 

Our Impact

The Employee Resource Group (ERG) was a monthly community-building and professional development opportunity that employers and employees could both attend to help new and existing workers of diverse belief backgrounds feel confident and comfortable at work to benefit both them and their workplace. Each month, the topic was based on a sacred day relevant for a certain community group (e.g. Hinduism and Sikhism in March, Islam in April, Buddhism in May, attendance to existing Pow Wow event in June, Judaism in October, Christianity in December). An average of 8 participants attended the ERGs monthly.  

The Working Together: Engaging Faith and Belief at Work Certification is a credential that demonstrates an employer’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion for employees or all backgrounds. The Certification creates a process to help employers support employees in working effectively while also living in accordance with their beliefs in ways that do not create an undue burden on the workplace. A total of 18 participants were certified.  

This training can provide ways of knowing that some might not always feel comfortable with, or are shy to share but it helps us engage and invoice staff by letting them know that they are welcome to bring their whole self to work.

HR personnel at the Temiksaming Lodge, Ontario

Related Services

We help identify knowledge gaps and challenges in welcoming newcomers, and create individualized training, policies and practices, and resources. 

Needs Assessments and Action Plans 

Identifying the existing gaps and challenges that organizations and communities face in meeting the needs of newcomers.

Rural Employers’ Awareness on Diversity and Inclusion Training

Elevate your business’s sustainability and tackle labour shortages head-on with our customizable training.

Building Rural Capacity to Support Newcomers

Our training is custom-tailored to help service providers and municipalities learn effective strategies to meet newcomers’ needs and foster welcoming communities.

Get Support

Our dedicated team is committed to supporting rural communities to help them thrive. Connect with us to explore how we can work with you.

What We Do

Check out our current projects and initiatives that support Canada’s rural, remote, and Indigenous communities. Need help in your community? We also offer a variety of services to kick-start your own projects.

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