ECO Canada Provides Training and Funding for Young Professionals in the Environmental Sector
Calgary, Alta., July 24, 2023 –
Through funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada, ECO Canada’s Science Horizon Youth Internship Program provides training and funding for young professionals to help gain experience in the environmental sector. This program helps them build a network of peers and mentors to ensure success. For employers, it allows them to hire young professionals and create meaningful environmental jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics by removing limitations and challenges of hiring new professionals.
This Science Horizon Youth Internship Program offers eligible employers 80 per cent wage coverage up to $25,000 of a participant’s salary in a new full-time position. Science Horizons funding also provides additional funds up to $5,000 for interns to access training, skills development and wrap-around services. Both the employer and candidate must fill out reports throughout the placement for the employer to receive the wage subsidy.
This program is open to participants who are ages 15-30, with a focus around the STEM field. Participants must be post-secondary graduates and hold Canadian citizenship, Canadian permanent residency status, or Canadian refugee status.
With nearly 30 per cent of the current workforce expected to retire in the next decade, there is a growing need to attract new talent, including young professionals. By 2025, there are over 170,0000 environmental job openings expected to be filled. Labour shortages are predicted across a wide range of different occupations.
“The Science Horizons Internship Program is a testament to ECO Canada’s commitment to supporting the next generation of environmental leaders. Through this program, we provide aspiring young graduates with valuable opportunities to gain experience and make a real impact in the field,” says ECO Canada’s President and CEO, Kevin Nilsen.
ECO Canada provides ongoing support for candidates to find a placement. ECO Canada offers a job board where job seekers can browse environmental opportunities and employers can post their job openings. Using AI matching systems, ECO Canada’s job board guarantees to reduce the time commitment for employers and professionals. Job seekers can upload their resume to be notified of jobs matching their skills and experience, ultimately creating an easier way to find jobs. The ECO Canada job board recently reached over 10,000 resume uploads.
ECO Canada’s commitment to the environmental workforce has created more than 17,000 job placements, and the federal subsidies released through their program oversight has amounted to over $176 million to date. Click here to view ECO Canada’s other employment programs.
ECO Canada remains dedicated to building a robust environmental workforce by helping students transition from post-secondary institutions to the workforce. The organization is committed to ensuring Canada has an adequate supply of professionals with the demonstrated skills and knowledge to meet environmental human resource needs.
About ECO Canada:
ECO Canada is the steward of the Canadian environmental industry. From job creation and wage funding to training and labour market research – we champion the end-to-end career of an environmental professional. We aim to promote and drive responsible, sustainable economic growth within the industry while ensuring that environmental care and best practice are priorities. Over the past 30 years, we have forged academic partnerships, tools, and research to train and certify environmental job seekers and help fill the labour market.
We work alongside government, policymakers, academia, students, employers, professionals, industry, and international audiences to ensure we support Canada as a global leader in innovative workforce solutions and job creation. We remain the go-to source in the environmental labour market; our research provides unmatched statistics and analysis on the industry’s economic and labour trends that identify workforce gaps.
For more information, contact:
Aaron Wilson
VP, Marketing & Sales
ECO Canada
media@eco.ca
