Back in September we learned of a little light burning bright in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside called Tradeworks – “a unique trades training program for women facing multiple barriers to employment” (see original post here). So it was with real interest that I read an upbeat follow-up this week here in the local Metro, reporting that 2013 will mark the first year the non-profit business will break even. Why? “It’s all thanks to (Tradeworks trainee turned trainer) Toni Glick’s decision several years ago to design a set of 12 intricately cut Christmas ornaments using a laser engraver. The women are now struggling to keep pace with orders for the wooden bobbles, which are made of 100 per cent discarded wood. Their clients are some of B.C.’s biggest businesses, including Telus, Lululemon, and the Vancouver Art Gallery Store.”

We’re told that Tradeworks now trains 72 teen and adult women each year, while employing up to 12 in the carpentry shop’s bridge employment program. “I’ve learned a lot about production and it’s fulfillment,” Glick said of the experience “We knew nothing, like nothing, none of us, about business, at all.. Now the problem is we can’t keep up.”

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”
– Charles Dickens