There is a widely demonstrated need for inclusive, flexible hiring in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES). Vancouver’s DTES is one of the poorest postal code areas in Canada and faces daily adversity. A long history of struggle and lack of public funding has shaped the community to its current state. Despite the adversity and precarity in living situations for many of the community members, the community has extremely resilient, hardworking individuals but find themselves facing barriers to employment for a variety of reasons.

About Cultivate Inclusivity

Cultivate Inclusivity was founded during our time in SFU’s Civic Innovation Change Lab during the Spring 2020 cohort in Neighbourhood Resiliency. Under the guidance and mentorship of our instructors, Citystudio, community partners and city staff, we were able to incubate our idea into a reality. Our platform aims to reduce barriers to work by connecting local Eastside businesses with diligent, committed community members that are registered with employment agencies to
fulfill micro jobs.

Summer 2020 has been a journey

This summer has been a journey for Cultivate. During the Summer 2020 semester, we were privileged to be in a start-up accelerator while also receiving funding through the social innovation seed fund. Initially, we had planned to solely focus on community outreach and gaining additional insights from community members in order to better understand how the process can be better suited to their needs. However, we were informed by one of our community partners that the only way to gain better insights was to get the community members shifts with job placements. Individuals in the DTES are heavily researched and know exactly what researchers want to hear, therefore solely conducting qualitative interviews would not be the full perspective to confirm or disprove our assumptions. Moving forward in the accelerator, we had planned to pilot our program with three partner employers and our current employment agency collaborator, Embers Eastside Work. We would work with a small pool of community members and allow them to schedule and work on their terms. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with movement to remote work and increased concern for reducing possible contacts, we quickly had to switch our plans.

As we learned, the market environment is constantly evolving and changing. Therefore, we made the quick decision to focus solely on how employer needs and their capacity to support community members that face barriers to stability. Throughout the summer, we were able to interview multiple DTES businesses that are aware of the unique challenges that the community faces. We were able to gain multiple valuable insights with regards to supportive employment, likelihood of unexpected business needs and their commitment to positive community impact.

This summer has taught us that we have a long road ahead of us which has many twists and turns but from the amazing reception that we have received from the community, we feel even more empowered to make a difference in this resilient and powerful community. We can’t wait to continue expanding our work with the DTES.