Last Updated on December 19, 2025 by BCCWITT Admin
2025 BCCWITT Year in Review
In 2025, the BC Centre for Women in the Trades…
Launched Show Up for Safer Workplaces
After over a year of hard work by our Show Up team, and alongside our committed partners, Show Up for Safer Workplaces launched strong this fall: it has already trained over 30 participants through our three pilot cohorts! And the feedback on the way it addresses critical issues impacting people in the trades has been really positive.
Check out our new promo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNBW7UUqfGQ
And learn more about this four-day psychological health and safety training program here: https://bccwitt.ca/showup/
Built a community of apprentices through the ConnectHER Journey to Success for Women Apprentices program
The JSWA program brought together over 100 women and gender-diverse apprentices and pre-apprentices from across the province for training, community building, mentorship, and networking events. Funded through Fanshawe’s ConnectHER, we offered monthly meetups, leadership development training, financial skills development, and in person events…offering new connections and opportunities to apprentices across the province in over 25 different trades!
See some of the testimonials from the program on Facebook here.
Wrapped our Career Advancement Bursary and Project Grant Programs
Funded through the BC Enhance program (thanks to an investment from the Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills), BCCWITT was able to disperse vital funding, in the form of both individual bursaries and project grants, directly to tradespeople across the province, between the spring of 2023 and spring of 2025!
Some bursary stats:
- We managed and delivered nearly 300 individual bursaries that helped equity priority tradespeople advance their careers—with bursaries targeted to flexibly help support the individual needs of each applicant.
- People typically used these bursaries for things like the purchase of tools or PPE, or for covering tuition or training fees. But we also had applications for things like fixing vehicles to ensure trades workers could get themselves and their tools to and from worksites, personal strength training (women looking to build muscle strength to allow them to better manage the physical nature of apprentice work), the cost of flexible child care coverage, rent supplements in the midst of an affordable housing crisis, community building opportunities, and accessing mental health supports.
- Over 85% of funding went to women or gender diverse applicants, with the other 15% going to other equity priority trades workers who face barriers in their career journey.
- Applications came from regions across the province, and represented people working in 46 different trades!
Some project grant stats:
- 100% of the 26 project grants went to women or gender diverse applicants looking to host initiatives to promote skilled trades careers to youth and equity priority people.
- Individual projects included Youth in Trades camps, hosting meetups (where tradeswomen created community and vital connections across sites and trades, helping support retention), Building Tiny Homes (built for refugees, using the building experience as an opportunity to recruit community members into skilled trades careers), a women in trades photoshoot, a trades Pride event, and a project introducing carpentry skills to those caring for a community garden in Ntamtquen.
Helped over 100 women enter the industry
Here at the end of 2025 we’re celebrating the continued success of our Trades Training and Employment program (also known as our Careers program), which once again helped over 100 women enter careers in construction, maintenance, and industrial trades across the province. See some of the testimonials from that program on Facebook here.