Integration through education

Improving the integration experience for immigrants is a win for everyone. Helping newcomers get settled faster and more easily in to the Canadian landscape means they have a positive experience and it also means they are contributing sooner to the economy, culture and social fabric.

Newcomers to Canada are one of the diverse groups we serve, thus integration and settlement issues are important to us at TalentOyster. We have several programs in place to help bridge settlement gaps where we can.

One of the topics you'll hear when discussions of integration and settlement come up is learning more about Canada. Canadians want new immigrants to be knowledgeable about the country. The government, and the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, speak of the education of newcomers in Canadian history, culture and values as an essential part of the settlement process. And most of all newcomers themselves have a strong thirst for knowledge about the country that has become their new home. New immigrants do feel a sense of obligation to the country that has accepted them, but pragmatically as well they understand that knowing more about the history of the country helps them to understand the country today, and ultimately be more successful.

So in this line we're very proud to help announce The Canadian Experience : A Civic Literacy Project for the New Mainstream, a 52 week series of columns, written and edited by some of Canada's leading historians and authors, with information about Canadian history, culture and experience. The Canadian Experience is a project of our parent company (Multimedia Nova Corporation) and is being published through our nation-wide partner network of in-language news-media. We at TalentOyster are excited at being part of a project that can help the people we serve more than just helping them find a job. We believe that giving people the educational tools to help them help themselves helps build a stronger country for everyone.

Besides the columns there are other interesting and fun things on the site. You can read more about the series and the authors, find links to history resources and test your history knowledge with the The Canadian Experience Quiz. And last but not least you can find The Canadian Experience on Facebook.

So come check out the site and the series, let us know what you think and be sure to tell your friends. This project is one of the ways in which we are working to improve the integration and settlement process for new Canadians but more education about the history of our country is, we think, a good thing for everyone.