{"id":37070,"date":"2025-10-23T13:37:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37070"},"modified":"2025-10-23T13:37:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:37:48","slug":"blue-doors-construct-set-to-go-national-on-fifth-anniversary-when-we-invest-in-people-we-transform-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/blue-doors-construct-set-to-go-national-on-fifth-anniversary-when-we-invest-in-people-we-transform-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Door\u2019s Construct set to go national on fifth anniversary: \u201cWhen we invest in people, we transform communities\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora-based Construct, an initiative of Blue Door, is set to go national as the employment social enterprise marks its fifth anniversary in York, Peel, and Durham Regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The national expansion was announced at their fifth-anniversary celebrations held Tuesday afternoon at their Earl Stewart Drive headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Construct provides in-class training, on-the-job work experience, and wraparound supports to vulnerable members of the community, helping them find long-term, well-paying jobs in the trades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundations for Construct were first laid by Emmy Kelly, now Interim CEO of Blue Door, as part of her dissertation while pursuing her MBA. Looking back over the last five years, she says the program \u201cwas born from a bold idea that meaningful, well-paid work can be one of the most powerful ways to prevent homelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFive years later, what that means to us is we are seeing more than 750 lives that have been changed, that have been supported, to move from survival to stability, and from exclusion to contribution,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat I\u2019m personally very excited about, too, is that this celebration isn\u2019t just about what we\u2019ve built so far, but it\u2019s about what comes next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to be bringing this now-proven model to communities across Canada as Construct Canada. With the cross-sector partnerships we\u2019ve built, we are planning to scale that impact to create a national blueprint for change. The team has already built out the digital portal and the partnerships to replicate this model across our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going national, she says, was a goal for Construct as soon as they got off the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have direct service delivery now in York, Durham, and Peel, and then the replicable parts have been to build out a curriculum and training elements and partnerships that can be replicated,\u201d she explains. \u201cWe have a training portal that has access for both facilitators and participants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building on such partnerships Construct has built locally, such as those with LiUNA, Habitat for Humanity, and the YMCA, similar partnerships can be leveraged by other charities and organizations aiming to replicate the Construct model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have an expansion team in place and we\u2019ve run a pilot in both Niagara and Halifax, which have been super-successful, and this year we\u2019re going to do two more and continue to expand that reach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Construct is something of a local success story, regardless of how far they expand across Canada, the core measures of success will remain the same: the people they serve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConstruct has a 95 per cent graduation rate and an 85 per cent success rate into long-term and stable careers,\u201d says Kelly. \u201cThe whole basis of this trades-based employment social enterprise is to improve housing stability through increased incomes. Those will always be our baselines. Essentially those who have been detached from the labour market are detached for a reason, and so we provide the wraparound and individualized supports that are needed to move past those barriers and to connect to careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re benefiting from one of these programs, like emergency housing, you\u2019re in your very most vulnerable state and it\u2019s not generally a point of pride; you\u2019re working hard to get out of those circumstances whereas with the Construct program, we find that participants are really proud of the work that they do and what they create with their hands, and it does feel like a successful step forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people like Matt, who once faced closed doors due to incarceration, I mean a lot of closed doors; after he came out he was able to find Construct and the team worked with him. He graduated from Construct, he gained employment, he studied for his degree, he\u2019s a manager now, and he comes back to Construct to mentor our participants \u2013 and that\u2019s just proof that when we invest in people, we transform communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith this program, because of its very intentional work, it does really feel like we’re starting to build fences at the top of the cliff rather than hospitals at the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora-based Construct, an initiative of Blue Door, is set to go national as the employment social enterprise marks its fifth anniversary in York, Peel, and Durham Regions. The national expansion was announced at their fifth-anniversary celebrations held Tuesday afternoon at their Earl Stewart Drive headquarters. Construct provides in-class training, on-the-job work experience, and wraparound supports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9DU","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-26 03:56:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37070"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37071,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37070\/revisions\/37071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}