Vanier Receives $120,000 Global Skills Opportunity Grant to Develop a Tool to Improve Safety for Students Traveling Abroad

Vanier College is pleased to announce that the International Education Office of regular programs has received $120,000 thanks to government funding for Global Skills Opportunity projects.

The latest Vanier project that will benefit from the funding involves creating a set of tools to allow Cegeps to respect a new provincial amendment made to Bill 59 the Act Respecting Occupational health and safety.  Under the amendment, Cegeps are now considered the employers of students carrying out an internship within the framework of a study program, and therefore have a legal obligation to properly inform, instruct and supervise these students and to do everything reasonably possible to protect them.

The Vanier project has studied this law with the help of the risk management company Aleas Inc. and has created a risk management process and procedure for approving internship locations outside of Canada. Along with consortium partners, Cégep de Granby and Cégep André-Laurendeau, the procedures and tools will be tested and approved by Spring 2024.

Every year, a number of Vanier students travel abroad to work on their program internships or as part of a course.  Nursing students do their final 6 to 8-week clinical internship in Malawi.  Environmental and Wildlife Management students do internships in Namibia, Belize, Costa Rica, and Nepal. Animal Health Technology students travel to Namibia.  Business Administration students travel to France and Belgium and soon to Namibia for internships.

As well, opportunities for study abroad are constantly being created, so the need to protect students while they work in other countries under a wide variety of conditions is critical. While Vanier cannot control the vagaries of changes or events in a strange country, Vanier has developed a tool to analyze hazards in the workplace or the environment where internships take place, and to offer ways of palliating the harmful or negative effects of physical and geographical adverse conditions students might encounter abroad.

The new tool consists of an online questionnaire and assessment of risk. The prototype tool will be tested this winter when Vanier students head off to internships in Africa, Latin America, Nepal and Europe.

If all goes well, the tool will be released for widespread use in spring 2024.