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Looking for a Resilient Career for the Future? Keep an Eye Out for the Lighthouse

Published

3 years ago

8 minute read

Lighthouse Labs

If we consider that the future of work will include a multitude of digital practices, it is up to us as employees and employers to embrace this shift with readiness and education. More familiar than not, the skills we learn through our years in education are a base, from which we hope to secure a position that falls in the same realm as our studies. The challenge is that even with curriculum updates and youth programs, the study of ever-changing digital education continues to be a challenge for both teachers and students.

We as a society are moving into a gig-heavy economy, with individuals packing more onto their certification rosters in the hopes of diversifying their resume’s. For those who may want to keep the pace over the next decade, two key categories within education shine through – data science and web development. 

The importance of these skills may seem only attributable to certain industries, however, if we consider the more intensive labour positions, how data is perceived and understood is immensely important. If you are a mid-career worker, someone looking to renew their digital education or one to pursue alternative career paths that carry real promise, these skills may prove to be some of the most sought after in the near future. 

To no surprise that the end of year report by Payscale shows the two “hottest jobs” fall in the data category, reflected by the “The Future of Jobs Report 2020” by the World Economic Forum. This report shows a progressive estimate for skills that will be in demand up to 2025 and beyond. 

 

Source: Future of Jobs Survey 2020, World Economic Forum, Fig. 18, p27

This is all great knowledge to have on hand, but where can similar skills be learnt without investing in a multi-year university degree? 

One Canadian company has tangible options.

 

Lighthouse Labs

Lighthouse Labs is a Canadian company founded in 2013 by its CEO Jeremy Shaki. They specialize in educational programs and boot camps in the fields of web development and data science. Their team has created intuitive learning programs attainable for all walks of life who carry a ‘growth mindset’ into their personal development. 

They offer full-time and part-time courses for their multiple bootcamps, with available mentorship from experienced professionals in both fields. The results from their 2019 Student Outcomes Report available on their website. A year from January 2019, 504 students enrolled in their bootcamps, 458 graduated and 324 gained employment post bootcamp.  Out of the 329 graduates who completed a job-seeking cycle within 180 days post-bootcamp, 95% of that group accepted employment. These numbers are incredible in comparison to the investment required for a new career avenue in 2021.

In March of 2020, we experienced a mass transition to digital communications in our daily and work lives due to the pandemic. For some, the integration of conference calls, internal team applications and a pressing focus on data was simple to grasp, but not for all. 

In light of some of these challenges, Lighthouse Labs has implemented and collaborated with multiple organizations to offer “Impact Initiatives”. Created to offer hyper-focused ways of educating groups of Canadians to enhance their digital literacy.

In collaboration with Kids Code Jeunesse, a non-profit organization focused on digitally-focused educational programs for youth, with funding from the Government of Canada created the Code Create Teach initiative. This partnership had 2,703 teachers experience a one-day introductory workshop on coding and computational thinking. The objective was to offer teachers additional tools they can bring into their classrooms to enhance their student’s grasp of digital technologies.

There are multiple ongoing initiatives with Lighthouse Labs and other organizations that are available to view on their website. Another that stood out is the “Accelerating Possibilities Project” in partnership with Woodgreen Community Services. Created to offer mid-career workers an opportunity to learn new skills in web development, data science and customer service. Now more than ever, these types of initiatives have the opportunity to benefit the lives of countless Canadians. 

As noted in various media outlets over recent years, there is an outcry for traditional industry workers to keep pace with the digital revolution with training and support. This is one opportunity where Lighthouse Labs and other educational programs can offer a real avenue to a new career. 

It should be noted that parallel to the closing of office spaces, restrictions on multi-person worksites and the mass layoffs in some of the more traditional industries, these skills offer the opportunity to both begin a new career path with an educated support system, and to re-evaluate what new skills could bring more value to your current position and your company’s future.

Scholarship Funding

Lighthouse Labs has a strong sense of supporting their community and has recently announced a new scholarship fund in response to the difficult economic and societal conditions our country has faced due to the pandemic. After a high interest in their March 2020 scholarship round, they announced another $500,000 scholarship fund for those in need. You may be eligible for up to $5,000 in support for a full-time bootcamp and $750 for part-time programs if you’ve been laid off, had your hours reduced, or are out of school because of the pandemic. For interested individuals, download their financial guide for more information. 

If you would like to learn more about Lighthouse Labs, their support for our communities and the various boot camps they offer, check out their website. All of their material has been digitized and has opened up their reach to anywhere in Canada, check out their blog to learn more about their platform for online tech education. Their team has created a wide variety of reading material to help interested parties learn more prior to an application. These skills are here to stay, the more we integrate with data and web development, the more employers will be headhunting for the right candidate – which truly could be you.

 

 

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

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Addictions

‘Harm Reduction’ is killing B.C.’s addicts. There’s got to be a better way

Published on January 28, 2024

By

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Susan Martinuk 

B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy

Since 2016, more than 40,000 Canadians have died from opioid drug overdoses — almost as many as died during the Second World War.
Governments, health care professionals and addiction experts all acknowledge that widespread use of opioids has created a public health crisis in Canada. Yet they agree on virtually nothing else about this crisis, including its causes, possible remedies and whether addicts should be regarded as passive victims or accountable moral agents.

Fuelled by the deadly manufactured opioid fentanyl, Canada’s national drug overdose rate stood at 19.3 people per 100,000 in 2022, a shockingly high number when compared to the European Union’s rate of just 1.8. But national statistics hide considerable geographic variation. British Columbia and Alberta together account for only a quarter of Canada’s population yet nearly half of all opioid deaths. B.C.’s 2022 death rate of 45.2/100,000 is more than double the national average, with Alberta close behind at 33.3/100,00.

In response to the drug crisis, Canada’s two western-most provinces have taken markedly divergent approaches, and in doing so have created a natural experiment with national implications.

B.C. has emphasized harm reduction, which seeks to eliminate the damaging effects of illicit drugs without actually removing them from the equation. The strategy focuses on creating access to clean drugs and includes such measures as “safe” injection sites, needle exchange programs, crack-pipe giveaways and even drug-dispensing vending machines. The approach goes so far as to distribute drugs like heroin and cocaine free of charge in the hope addicts will no longer be tempted by potentially tainted street drugs and may eventually seek help.

But safe-supply policies create many unexpected consequences. A National Post investigation found, for example, that government-supplied hydromorphone pills handed out to addicts in Vancouver are often re-sold on the street to other addicts. The sellers then use the money to purchase a street drug that provides a better high — namely, fentanyl.

Doubling down on safe supply, B.C. recently decriminalized the possession of small amounts of illicit drugs. The resulting explosion of addicts using drugs in public spaces, including parks and playgrounds, recently led the province’s NDP government to attempt to backtrack on this policy — though for now that effort has been stymied by the courts.

According to Vancouver city councillor Brian Montague, “The stats tell us that harm reduction isn’t working.” In an interview, he calls decriminalization “a disaster” and proposes a policy shift that recognizes the connection between mental illness and addiction. The province, he says, needs “massive numbers of beds in treatment facilities that deal with both addictions and long-term mental health problems (plus) access to free counselling and housing.”

In fact, Montague’s wish is coming true — one province east, in Alberta. Since the United Conservative Party was elected in 2019, Alberta has been transforming its drug addiction policy away from harm reduction and towards publicly-funded treatment and recovery efforts.

Instead of offering safe-injection sites and free drugs, Alberta is building a network of 10 therapeutic communities across the province where patients can stay for up to a year, receiving therapy and medical treatment and developing skills that will enable them to build a life outside the drug culture. All for free. The province’s first two new recovery centres opened last year in Lethbridge and Red Deer. There are currently over 29,000 addiction treatment spaces in the province.

This treatment-based strategy is in large part the work of Marshall Smith, current chief of staff to Alberta’s premier and a former addict himself, whose life story is a testament to the importance of treatment and recovery.

The sharply contrasting policies of B.C. and Alberta allow a comparison of what works and what doesn’t. A first, tentative report card on this natural experiment was produced last year in a study from Stanford University’s network on addiction policy (SNAP). Noting “a lack of policy innovation in B.C.,” where harm reduction has become the dominant policy approach, the report argues that in fact “Alberta is currently experiencing a reduction in key addiction-related harms.” But it concludes that “Canada overall, and B.C. in particular, is not yet showing the progress that the public and those impacted by drug addiction deserve.”

The report is admittedly an early analysis of these two contrasting approaches. Most of Alberta’s recovery homes are still under construction, and B.C.’s decriminalization policy is only a year old. And since the report was published, opioid death rates have inched higher in both provinces.

Still, the early returns do seem to favour Alberta’s approach. That should be regarded as good news. Society certainly has an obligation to try to help drug users. But that duty must involve more than offering addicts free drugs. Addicted people need treatment so they can kick their potentially deadly habit and go on to live healthy, meaningful lives. Dignity comes from a life of purpose and self-control, not a government-funded fix.

Susan Martinuk is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of the 2021 book Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health Care Crisis. A longer version of this article recently appeared at C2CJournal.ca.

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City of Edmonton

City of Edmonton defends response to homeless encampments

Published on January 9, 2024

By

Edmonton homeless encampment from 2022 (Photo: Alexander Shamota, Alberta Views Magazine).

News release from the City of Edmonton 

Overview of the City of Edmonton’s information in Court about its response to homeless encampments

The City of Edmonton’s response to encampments prioritizes the well-being of unhoused and vulnerable persons, while acknowledging the impacts that encampments can have on the entire community. The City’s approach seeks to acknowledge all relevant perspectives: the lived experiences of the unhoused, the needs and expertise of social agencies, available information from law enforcement, the specialized expertise of our Fire Rescue Service, and the voices of those communities impacted by encampments. The City’s response to encampments accepts that outdoor sheltering is not a safe or sustainable solution for managing homelessness.
At court on January 10 and 11, the City of Edmonton will be responding to the case brought by the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights. In responding to this legal challenge, the City does not seek to minimize the lived experiences and significant challenges faced by our unhoused residents. However, the City of Edmonton seeks to ensure that the court has access and understanding of the full picture and perspective of humans and organizations impacted by homelessness.
A compassionate and effective response to homelessness requires a combination of long term solutions and transitional accommodations. Our experience has shown that, at times, immediate intervention is required.
The City has filed evidence with the Court, and will be presenting the Court with the following facts:
  • While numbers of shelter beds and unhoused persons vary from day to day, Edmonton’s shelters have had excess capacity throughout 2023, with even more capacity available in 2024. In periods of extreme demand, capacity can be scaled upwards immediately. A person seeking indoor shelter in Edmonton will never be left without an indoor place to shelter.
  • Edmonton’s shelter system supports and accommodates persons with diverse backgrounds and lived experiences, including persons who use drugs, all genders and sexualities, all religions, couples, and persons with disabilities. Edmonton has Indigenous-led shelter spaces, women-only spaces, and specialized shelter programming for Indigenous persons who have experienced trauma.
  • Outdoor sheltering poses severe dangers to the unhoused. Evidence will be presented of examples of gang victimization, armed robbery, physical and sexual assault, sexual exploitation, sanitation issues leading to disease, frostbite and cold-weather injuries, and fatalities caused by tent and encampment fires. These risks will be shown to be attributable to outdoor sheltering, not the removal of encampments.
  • In the last five years, Edmonton Fire Rescue Services has reported at least seven deaths and 26 injuries from 276 fires that could be attributed to tents or encampments. This number is likely a significant underestimate due to the challenges inherent in investigating these types of fires.
  • Expert medical evidence from Alberta’s former Chief Medical Officer of Health will be presented showing that encampments increase potential communicable disease transmission and fire- and violence-related injuries when compared with emergency shelters.
  • Encampments can pose a danger to the community at large. Evidence will be presented of violence arising from encampments, accumulations of human feces, biohazardous waste, weapons and drug paraphernalia surrounding encampments, uncontrolled fires and propane cylinder explosions, and examples of wildfires starting at encampments in Edmonton’s natural areas.
  • The number of complaints from members of the public has significantly risen over the last number of years. Between January 1, 2023 and October 22, 2023, there were 13,683 complaints from concerned Edmontonians.
  • Encampment closures are evaluated on a risk matrix. This is an attempt to respond to community concerns, ongoing damage to the environment and infrastructure, as well as the inherent dangers in outdoor encampments. When camps are first assessed and again when closed, offers are made to take individuals to a shelter. As well, during the encampment closure process, opportunities are provided for individuals to connect with various community organizations supporting the unhoused.
  • Evidence will be presented on the impacts associated with Camp Pekiwewin (2020). The City has been provided evidence of physical and sexual violence, gang violence, sex trafficking, sanitation and biological health hazards for occupants of Camp Pekiwiwin. Evidence provided by residents of the Rossdale community shares examples of violence and physical assault, theft of property, residents leaving the community for their own safety, vandalism, fire, and significant River Valley damage due to firewood cutting by encampment occupants.
The City is sharing this information from its filed legal documents as a public service. As the matter is before the Courts, no additional public commentary will be made.
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