June 25th, 2025
Building Skills, Confidence, and Connection
By: Jayme Pembleton, Employable Skills Development Program Coordinator
I believe that everyone who has been involved with the Employable Skills Development Program (ESDP) has done some learning, growing, and evolving. The program itself is brand new and is therefore morphing with each new thing that we discover. As the program coordinator, I have the pleasure of sharing information about the kinds of skills that help one to be successful in a job; work side by side with participants in the community to build experience; and have conversations with our volunteer placement hosts that are beneficial for all involved!
I cannot think of a time when this program hasn’t been making changes to try and fit the needs within our community. What began as an extension of our KW Library of Things (KWLOT) Practicum Librarian project has morphed into something entirely its own. With support from KWLOT, WALES Group, and Community Participation Services, we have built something special.
The gift of our first session of ESDP in January 2025 was that it was a smaller group, which allowed us to build some closer relationships with those in the program, along with their placement hosts. Their participation, openness, and feedback helped shape the second term of the program.
We have also been pushed to be creative, mostly in sourcing our placements. At the beginning of the program, we had some incredible partners in our community who were eager to host placements for us and jumped on board right away! What we didn’t account for were some of the more creative and outside-of-the-box placements that participants may be looking for. Their ideas and dreams forced us to further grow ourselves and reach out to places we wouldn’t have even considered – and we were met with great success!
As the program goes on, and we continue to learn and change, we are so excited to see where we will go next.