Alumni take on promoting skilled trades, promote our competitors, hold regular workshops, attract employers to our members and create bursaries for trade workers.
Alumni members aren’t just people they hired to fill the space, they were exactly where most competitors were before, they’ve been there and had the opportunity to show the judges and everyone else around them what they can do and their here to pass on those skills, training and word of advice. They once stood where the current and future generations of competitors are at now. Being a member of the skills alumni can also be fun, some travel to nationals or worlds to help chaperone the trip, public speaking to groups to encourage taking up a trade, some sit on the Skills Canada PEI board, the limit is endless in this community.
FROM AN ALUMNI
An Alumni- As an alumni of Skills Canada PEI, the training and competition has changed and helped me get to where I am today. In 2014, teachers of mine pushed me to compete in prepared speech, as someone who at the time couldn’t present a project in-front of a class, I had no intention to write and present a speech to strangers. But I had a teacher who wouldn’t stop until I caved in and signed up. Six years later, I cannot thank that teacher enough for pushing me past my comfort zone. Not only did I present but placed third in the competition that year, I continued to come back for two more years, never winning gold but I won much more than a medal. I won the confidence to stand in-front of people and talk. I won the path of my career. In 2019 I graduated from holland college with a diploma in journalism. In all honestly, if it wasn’t skills I wouldn’t of chose the career I did. The training alone for the competition gave me the support and confidence but standing in-front of the judges and telling them my speech was such a rush I knew I needed to follow a path where I was talking to people, crowds, strangers. Anyone who would give me the time to listen. If it wasn’t for the support and confidence the skills competition gave me over the years, I never would of thought of being a journalist
-Taya Gaudet
#SCPEIIGNITE
