[Bcma-l] summer students

[bcma-l@museumsassn.bc.ca]

This morning Two Rivers Gallery got a letter from Service Canada informing
us that none of our summer positions were funded under Canada Summer Jobs.
We had applied for 4 positions; we have gotten funding for summer students
for the past 8 years, in recent years for 2 positions through Service Canada
(HRDC).

Our application received a rating of 31 out of a possible 70; the cutoff was
35 for non-profit applications across BC.

I phoned a program officer at Service Canada and went through our
application in detail. I discovered a number of problems.

The Applicant Guide had asked us to "Describe, in order of priority, the
job(s) you are proposing". The rating, however, seems to average the scores
across the entire institution, and appears to fund all, or none at all. This
means that Two Rivers Gallery would have scored well above the cutoff if we
had applied for only our 2 highest priority positions, but asking for the
other 2 to be funded ended up sabotaging all 4. This cost us 5 points.

The assessment criteria do not take into account jobs that are based in one
community but focused on delivering services in another. We are based in
Prince George (pop 50K to 100K, 2 points), but our regional outreach is
focused on communities like Dunster, McBride, Valemount & Mackenzie (pop.
under 5K, 5 points).

I also have a big problem with the wording of criteria #4, "Employer is
committed to hiring priority students" (Aboriginal, with disabilities,
visible minority). Being naïve, I interpreted this to mean we had to commit
to hiring a priority student. Since our own internal non-discrimination
policy commits us to "not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, colour,...
disability" etc., it was impossible to give a commitment to hire based on
any of these categories. The cruel irony is that we did of course actively
recruit from all members of society and hire a young woman who is a visible
minority; a young woman whose job is now jeopardized by Service Canada's
funding decision. What Service Canada should have said is that the Employer
is committed to RECRUITING priority students. Another 5 points gone.

I also made the mistake of putting activities in the employability skills
category which they wanted to see in the mentoring category. There went
another 2 points.

All in all a very frustrating experience.

peter thompson
Managing Director, Two Rivers Gallery
--
"A man paints with his brains and not with his hands."
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)