KCTC Revitalization & Expansion

The Cause

The Kimberlite Career & Technical Centre opened 20 years ago and at the time, was an exciting and state of the art facility intended to open the door to careers in the trades for Yellowknife high school students. We are committed to not just restoring our facility to that status, but to expanding our program offerings. In order to accomplish this, we know we need to be providing students with the tools and equipment that is safest, of the highest quality, and trusted brands. We hope that with contributions from industry professionals, corporations, and grant programs, we can ensure students get an experience that enhances their vision of a future in the trades. Our building currently houses a carpentry woodshop, a welding bay, and a mechanics shop, and once these are fully equipped and up-to-date, we hope to expand into other non-traditional trades, aviation, etc. We are also hoping to take on the responsibility of educating the wider northern community on the great work our tradespeople are doing through our social media platform. Our student body is fairly unique in the sense that we have a much larger indigenous population than the polytechnic schools in the south. We have plans to develop programs specific to our Indigenous students, and specific to female students in an effort to help the trades workforce in the north diversify. We believe we have a fantastic opportunity to teach our students and our community that careers in the trades are possible for everyone, and hopefully in doing so, we can fill the labour void in Canadian trades industries. Our main challenge at the moment is in securing funding to support the upgrades we need, the new equipment we’d like to acquire, and the rising cost of consumables we need in order to continue to run our existing programs, and subsequently expand into more comprehensive programming.

Who Will it Benefit?

The Northwest Territories (like the rest of the country) is severely lacking in skilled tradespeople which has a significant impact not only on cities like Yellowknife, and industries like mining, but also on the people and industries that operate in the northern communities. In addition, we believe that our geographic isolation from the major cities that offer larger polytechnic training has led to a lot of youth never considering the trades as a viable pathway. We know that with an upgraded facility and more comprehensive programming we can connect more youth to the trades and work toward keeping more skilled tradespeople working in the north. We have plans to provide programming specifically for women and girls, and for Indigenous youth, and feel that in our work to provide more equitable trades access we would contribute to more inclusive industry environments.