Our story... the first 10 years
1996 Incorporation
Testimony of one of our corporation’s founders, Mr. Francis Côté:
“Ten years already! How we have grown through the years! I remember, as if it was yesterday, the first meetings of CJEL’s board of directors. Everything had to be built from the ground up we had no offices and no senior management, but mostly we had no idea what kind of services a Carrefour jeunesse-emploi should offer. Our decision to hire Ms. Monique Sauvé as executive director of the as-yet-inexistent Carrefour was definitely the defining moment in the organization’s existence. From the moment she arrived, Monique was able to overcome all the difficulties that came her way and build a credible and efficient Carrefour jeunesse-emploi that prides itself in being attuned to the needs of youth.
Ten years after my tenure on CJEL’s board of directors, I am now the director of the Réseau des carrefours jeunesse-emploi and am well positioned to recognize the tremendous progress the Carrefour has accomplished. I can also affirm, without a doubt, that Laval residents can count on the services of one of Quebec’s best Carrefour jeunesse-emploi.”
1997 Official opening on January 14th and inauguration on February 24th
Carrefour jeunesse-emploi de Laval was inaugurated on February 24, 1997. Several local deputies were present, along with many of our partners. The press conference was held in an empty corner of our office, located at 3 Place Laval, Suite 10 (three years later, five new offices were built on the same premises). One hundred and ninety files were opened that year. Partnerships were finalized and the Carrefour’s team grew to seven members.
1998 to 1999 Expansion and access
As early as 1998, we wanted to improve access to our services. At that time there were four offices on Île Jesus borrowed from the local community service centers (CLSC) and Maisons de la famille, as well as one “floating” representative who went from appointment to appointment as needed by Laval’s youth. It was at this point that the Réseau des carrefours jeunesse-emploi du Quebec was born.
CJEL’s representatives were active in many organizations. More and more partnerships were formed and the service offering was further defined. In 1998, our offices and documentation center were expanded. The “Info-Isep” hotline was launched in partnership with the SQDM (Société québécoise de développement de la main d’œuvre) and the agreement “Gestion de parcours” with the federal government began. We were now open on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings.
Representatives from the Centres travail Québec came to our offices to welcome and register youth in the “Option” program. Some of our representatives sat on the Conseil régional des partenaires du marché du travail. We were a member of the Youth Forum establishment committee, had a seat on the board of directors of the Community Development Corporation (CDC), and we had a presence on three governing boards.
In 1999, 71% of young people who sought our help achieved their action plans with success. That same year, Emploi-Québec was created and we signed our first agreement on guidance counselling with Emploi-Québec Laval. Also in 1999, we identified the existing Laval resources working in the field of entrepreneurship in order to evaluate the market potential of our own entrepreneurial services.
2000 to 2001 Sainte-Rose station, global approach, entrepreneurship, psycho-social intervention… and Solidarité jeunesse
The beginning of the new millennium gave us momentum and fostered the emergence of a new, less technical intervention method as well as a more global approach.
It is during this period that our team took shape with the help and expertise of our partners in the field, sharpening its antennae to better recognize the psycho-social problems of youth. We fine-tuned our knowledge of who were the experts in the community and became more comfortable with referencing. In 2000, 83% of the 2,030 youth who registered at the Carrefour achieved success. We built partnerships with Collège Montmorency as well as with youth centres, intensifying our involvement with the provincial network of CJEs.
An overview of our first years revealed an important customer base at our temporary office in the Sainte-Rose community service centre. Thus in 2000, we opened the Sainte-Rose station, our second permanent address serving Laval youth in the northern communities of the city. The awareness-raising and pre-start-up-oriented entrepreneurship service was begun that same year, while the psycho-social interventions were launched the following year. By 2000 CJEL’s team was already 17 employees strong.
In 2001, we signed a second agreement with Emploi-Québec Laval for the Jeunes volontaires project. We also developed a mentoring unit with the help of the Fondation en entrepreneurship, offering a pre-start-up service within the mandate of our entrepreneurship service.
The results obtained by the Solidarité Jeunesse pilot projects warranted full-scale deployment of this action research project across Quebec. The 2001 inaugural tour of Minister of Social Solidarity André Boisclair preceded its implementation in local CJEs and youth organizations across the province. In Laval, we welcomed Mr. Boisclair at the Centre de la nature. Participating youth and the signatories to this first agreement were present. Solidarité jeunesse was a brand new intervention method designed to ensure the professional success of new employment-assistance applicants.
2002 to 2003 - Expansion of the Sainte-Rose station, focus groups and Partenaires de la jeunesse
Our first small office in Sainte-Rose no longer met our needs so we had to move in order to offer more services. Six months after moving, appointments increased by 54% and our customer base grew by 13%. In 2002, 76% of the youth registered at the Carrefour had successfully completed their integration projects.
In the winter of 2002, Solidarité jeunesse participants took part in a graduation ceremony where they received diplomas in recognition of their successful completion of their projects. Exterior and interior boards posted on buses of the STL for a few months helped us to increase our visibility.
This period also marked the beginning of projects with the Fonds Jeunesse and the Secrétariat à la jeunesse: the “Partenaires de la Jeunesse” project that led us to the development of a youth portal, became “Espace J” Website, then the Youth cooperatives start-up assistance project. There were also new nominees to the Régie régionale de la Santé et des Services sociaux, and to the vice-presidency of the Réseau des carrefours jeunesse-emploi du Québec.
In 2003 we engaged youth more directly in order to find out what their needs were and to gauge their level of satisfaction with our services. Five focus groups, each dealing with one of our services and directed by an external consultant, validated our successful initiatives and set forth strategic recommendations on the orientation of our services. The Carrefour was a finalist in the Concours Dunamis of the Laval Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The 5th edition of the Congrès du Réseau des carrefours jeunesse-emploi du Québec, held at the Sheraton Laval Hotel, brought together more than 700 delegates. The same year our success rate rose to 79%, and our psycho-social intervention service came into its own by being offered fulltime.
The Carrefour’s 2003 team then employed 24 people.
2004 à 2005 Artigue, Je stage, Jeunes au travail Desjardins, Défi de l’entrepreneuriat, centralization of services and indexation of core funding
Some of the actions we took were guided by recommendations received from the focus groups, such as extending our office hours to include Thursday as well as Wednesday nights, creating exchange groups for young entrepreneurs, and consolidating follow-up interventions. In 2004, 2,804 youths registered at the Carrefour and the number of interventions increased by 14%.
Adding to the “Carrière-été” and the “Gestion de parcours” programs, Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) forged a new partnership with us: the Connexion competences project known as “Je stage”, in which youth without experience can participate in paid or career-oriented internships. A student of our guidance services represented the Laval region at the Séminaire international d’Artigue in Bordeaux, France. The experimentation of the project “Jeunes au travail Desjardins” by Lanaudière and Laurentides regions inspired us to do the same. Through this project we forged an alliance with the Fédération des Caisses Desjardins in an effort to support youth summer employment. The prime minister launched the “Défi de l’entrepreneuriat jeunesse” that enabled us to hire two awareness promotion officers in Laval whose mandate was to support and stimulate the entrepreneurial culture in the Laval community.
During 2005 we had to make a heart-wrenching choice regarding our services: with its structural costs and the levelling off of the number of its customers, we could no longer justify the existence of the Sainte-Rose office. Youth had told us that they preferred going to the main office at 3 Place Laval to have access to more services. We listened … What was important to them was not so much the proximity of the office as the quantity and diversity of the services offered. The possibility to acquire the offices adjacent to Suite 10 at Place Laval fuelled the decision-making process. In March 2005, all CJEL services were reunited under one roof. Then, great news reached us. Our core financing had not been indexed in five years. Presentations made by the CJE network, including an argument put forward by its financing committee, convinced the new minister of labour, Michelle Courchesne, that there was an urgent need to consolidate our actions. As a result she accepted our request and announced, during a press conference held at the Laval CJE, the addition of $2 million a year for three years. We were also nominated to the presidency of the Conseil d’établissement de Compétences 2000. Our team implemented its first code of ethics, and our guidance-oriented group intervention targeting Emploi-Québec clients celebrated its first success stories.