ACCES Employment’s Women in Technology initiative receives $CDN 1 million grant from The TD Ready Challenge
Toronto, Ontario, Wed. October 24, 2018 – ACCES Employment has been named one of the ten winners of the inaugural 2018 TD Ready Challenge presented by TD Bank Group.
ACCES’s Women in Technology (WiT) initiative will work to provide immigrant women with training and employer connections to secure IT related jobs in high-growth fields such as programming and cybersecurity. WiT will extend the reach of existing ACCES programs for women including START and Empowering Women. Training will be provided by ACCES in collaboration with an academic institution and participants will connect directly with hiring employers through a range of mentoring initiatives, guest speaker events and experiential learning projects. Participants will develop essential technical and soft skills to help them achieve success. Once they graduate, they will be given a chance to mentor and coach other learners.
“ACCES Employment is honoured to be an inaugural recipient of this grant. Our Women in Technology (WiT) initiative will bring a much-needed technology training option to immigrant women and will make a significant difference in their lives and those of their families. Building on our existing program innovation and success, we look forward to offering women the chance for a more successful career in a high-demand field of work,” says Allison Pond, President & CEO, ACCES Employment.
The TD Ready Challenge is a signature initiative, laddering up to The Ready Commitment, TD’s new corporate citizenship platform, aimed at opening doors to a more inclusive and sustainable tomorrow. Acting as a springboard for social innovation, TD established the TD Ready Challenge to identify and support scalable solutions to a specific issue identified within the drivers of The Ready Commitment. In its inaugural year, the TD Ready Challenge encouraged organizations across North America to create scalable solutions to help increase income stability and give people the skills they need for the economy of the future. In total, TD awarded $10 million (CDN) for the 2018 Challenge.