Pijunnaqunga – The Nunavik Internship Program
From March 2, 2020 to March 12, 2020, Pijunnaqunga successfully conducted the fifth two-week training in the community of Salluit. Out of 18 participants invited, 9 were able to join us from all over Nunavik and successfully complete the training. During these two weeks, the participants attended multiple workshops related to job readiness, career profiling, work ethics, self-awareness, time management and professional software tools. In addition to the internship that was to start in Kuujjuaq in January 2020 but that was postponed due to the interns’ personal situation, two other internships were scheduled to start in March 2020.
Unfortunately, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, Pijunnaqunga had to postpone the beginning of these two internships in Montreal and Salluit. The team was also expecting two other new internships in Montreal in the near future, but these are now on hold as well. Nonetheless, discussions with the Nunavik Landholding Corporation Association and the Qaqqalik Landholding Corporation of Salluit and their approval of the Pijunnaqunga program led to interesting internship opportunities in Montreal and Salluit.
The COVID-19 crisis affected Pijunnaqunga’s internships and in-person recruitment strategies due to the sanitary restriction that obliged us to postpone these specific activities until further notice. However, since the Pijunnaqunga team is able to pursue all its other activities remotely, it allowed it to finish selecting the interns and start planning the next recruitment tour. The quarantine period gave the staff the opportunity to take a step back to brainstorm and think about how to improve the program in the future. We have been using this opportunity to review, clarify and improve all our evaluation material, procedures and classification systems, as well as our training content.
The Pijunnaqunga program has officially been in recruitment mode since May 2020. We are very active on Facebook, letting Nunavimmiut know that this is the perfect time to apply to be part of the next Pijunnaqunga cohort! As offices slowly start to reopen, we hope to be able to restart our internship in the near future. Follow our Facebook page to stay up to date!