While I was in Toronto I went to a meeting at the Canadian Education and Research Institute for Counselling (CERIC). As well as meeting with Riz Ibrahim (who is the VP and General Manager there) I also met with Mark Venning (who I wrote about yesterday) and who is on the Board of Directors alongside a veritable who’s who of Canadian career development.
CERIC is a fantastic organisation which we completely lack an equivalent of in the UK. It is an independent charity funded from a bequest which is able to undertake and fund activity to support and occasionally challenge the Canadian career development sector. Because of the unique freedom it has it is able to act in the role of critical friend to the sector without having to necessarily follow the latest lines of government policy or justify itself to a membership organisation.
Because of this it has been able to undertake some really interesting work. The three main planks of CERIC strategy are:
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the Contactpoint online community site
Taken together these form an infrastructure which enables the career development community to discuss, innovate and reflect around issues of policy, theory and practice. The organisation also supplements this with additional training and networking events and activities.
Alongside this the organisation also funds some really exciting projects. Some of the projects that caught my attention were:
I hope that Canadians realise how lucky they are to have an organisation like CERIC contributing to the sector.
Adventures in Career Development 