M E M B E R S P O T L I G H T
placement service is to assist former
Canadian Armed Forces personnel
and their family members in find-ing
meaningful and rewarding civilian
career opportunities.
David Blackburn, Prospect’s direc-tor
of military employment services,
says Forces@WORK was borne out of
what the agency saw as a lack of sup-port
for people who were leaving the
Canadian Armed Forces to enter the
civilian labour force. While the mili-tary
did provide some basic employ-ment
services such as resume writ-ing
at the time, no one was provid-ing
any hands-on, direct placement
or retention employment services to
those individuals.
“You walk out that door and now
you’re deemed a civilian again, but
you haven’t been integrated back
into that society from which you
left and it’s a huge eye-opener,”
said Blackburn, a retired major who
served in the Canadian Armed Forces
for 25 years.
“You’ve suddenly got to do all of
these things that you didn’t have to
worry about while you were in uni-form
because everything was provid-ed
for you. Back then, it was service
before self. But back in the civilian
stream, it’s really about self before ser-vice.
That’s a big mind-shift for a lot of
service people.”
Prospect Human Services provides
employment services to a wide range
of individuals including professionals,
tradespeople and people living with
developmental disabilities. Adding a
program that catered to the needs of
military personnel was a natural fit,
considering many of the people the
organization initially helped follow-ing
its formation in the early 1950s
were veterans in the Calgary area who
served in the Second World War and
the Korean War.
It was actually retired Lt.-Gen.
Romeo Dallaire who provided the
inspiration for Forces@WORK.
Dallaire was the guest speaker at a
gala that Prospect Human Services
hosted in Calgary in 2011. After tour-ing
the organization’s offices and
being briefed on the work it did,
he asked why Prospect wasn’t doing
more to help former military per-sonnel
and detailed the significant
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