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.

Breaking down the walls

One major challenge many companies face when dealing with diversity hiring is how to deal with all the groups involved. It can be an overwhelming task to think about how to connect to each diversity group, the ethnic groups alone make for a long list. And even once you do connect to these groups you have to keep getting your message to them and even when you do get hires you're still struggling to know how to accommodate them.

It's all so hard.

But it doesn't have to be this way!

Diversity as a topic is just as much, if not more so, about your state of mind as the amount of effort, time and money you put in. Building a truly diverse organization starts with understanding that the time of putting up walls around little groups, putting people in neat little silos or boxes is gone. Because it simply doesn't work. The reality is that no matter how good your intentions are or no matter how hard you try treating people differently means inequality.

The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education made this very succinct point about the fundamental flaw with the then existing segregation policies "separate [educational] facilities are inherently unequal". And it's no different today. If you want diverse candidates to respect your company you must show them the respect of treating them equally.

"Okay nice theory", you say, "But how do I actually *do* this?"

Breaking down the walls that separate groups is really as simple as identifying the messages that speak to us all. People everywhere have common interests, goals and values. Finding meaningful and interesting employment. Being treated equally to everyone else. Being seen as part of a solution rather than a potential source of trouble.

These concepts are ones everyone can relate with. A diverse organization speaks to people about these shared goals and values because it knows that people of all groups respond to those messages.

It's really a simple shift in thinking but it's the difference between success and failure when it comes to diversity. And since after all we are talking about access to 1 in 6 candidates across the country it's just common sense to see how you can tear down the diversity walls in your organization.