Women Building Futures

Exit: May 2017

‹ Back

Women Building Futures (WBF) aims to help any woman, anywhere, who is interested in a career in construction and heavy equipment operation. Based in Alberta, WBF connects women with apprenticeship and employment opportunities, providing recruitment, assessment, training, job placement and job retention support. Through this work, the organization inspires economic prosperity for women and is forever transforming the face of industry in Canada.

Canada will face a significant shortfall of skilled construction workers in the coming years. WBF aims to address that by engaging with 132,000 women by 2020, of which 3%, or 4,000 individuals, will be Aboriginal.

“

We’ve gained invaluable experience from working with LIFT. In a short period of time, we developed the resources and strategic competencies we’ll need to manage growth and change and to better serve women in Canada.”

JudyLynn Archer Founding President and Former CEO

“

LIFT worked with our organization for over three years, helping us assess our readiness for scaling, focus our operational capacity, refine our processes and define our mandate in order to prepare for expanding the scope and impact of our organization. Since we engaged LIFT with our organization, we have expanded with a significant interprovincial project and into several new regional markets. With LIFT's insights and robust operational capacity planning, we have been able to improve our reach, our impact, and our scope.”

Angela Armstrong Board Chair, Women Building Futures

Opportunity

Enhance WBF’s operations and expand its outreach to support more underemployed and unemployed women to secure training and employment in construction-related trades and heavy equipment operation. Position the organization for future expansion beyond Alberta, to benefit Canadians across the country.

Plan

Focus on updating WBF’s business model and diversifying funding sources. Build organizational capacity, improve communications practices and expand outreach.

Impact

Developed business plan and budget, leading to $3.6 million in new funding
Identified alternative sources of funding to support targeted growth
Ensured capacity to enhance financial and organizational sustainability, enabling WBF to increase its scale
Provided internal and external communications to support change management and drive awareness of WBF’s programs and services
157%: A women’s average increase in income after completion of WBF’s pre-apprenticeship program
90%: 90 per cent of WBF’s training participants graduated—with 35 per cent of graduates identifying as Indigenous. Of those graduates, 90 per cent were employed within six months

partners

We thank the following partners for their support in executing the LIFT Plan: