Our Impact

A non-profit construction contractor delivering high quality work by providing long-term career pathways for motivated community members.

9+
years in operation

$1.5M
annual wages to participants

6.5K
retrofits completed

30K
units upgraded

100
people trained/year

90%
grads employed full-time

90K
hours paid training/year

Press highlights

Making a Difference: Building Up on Global News

Making a Difference: Construction school creates pathway to employment through free hands-on training.

Watch here

CBC Article on Building Ups contribution to green building careers

Social contractors could present solutions to housing crisis, labour shortage and climate change all at once.

Building Up and the Labor Market for Green Sector Trades

Watch how Building Up is helping build the skilled trades force to make Toronto a more efficient city.

Watch here

TCHC promoting our program for their residents

Building Up offers construction training and employment opportunities to TCHC tenants.

Testimonials

Akeem B.

BU Alumni and Mentor

Building Up played a vital role in me becoming who I am today. From assisting me in joining the Union, to helping me build the resume I needed for my first job site. They paid for all the PPE I needed, they paid for my driver's license, paid for all my classes at the College of Carpenters and Allied Trades. Trained me in financial literacy, paid my rent when I was having difficulty. They helped me track my hours when I was an apprentice, and as a Building Up Alumni they still call me from time to time to check on me and provide support.

Akeem B.

BU Alumni and Mentor

WOW! How many organizations out there can invest this much on an individual? Irrespective of who you are, Building Up is big on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and they're always ready to assist you. All you gotta do is just ask. A very big thank you to Building Up or all you've done for me and what you still do for me.

Scaling Up

Our biggest challenge is scaling up to meet the massive demand of the 1,800+ applications we receive each year. Next Steps:

New Training Facility:

Our current training centre has the space to train 100 per year. Our goal is to double this capacity and we are looking for support to locate and fund a 15,000 square ft facility to house that growth

Program Expansion:

Our current funding partners enable us to fund 100 training spots per year. We are looking to build new partnership and scale the existing to fund the deep supports we provide to our participants, and meet the communities demand for this training.

New Services:

As a social enterprise, we provide all our trainees with work on sites. To train more people, we need more sites, and are therefore actively expanding our service offerings to new trades to be able to build a business that can support the training we aim to provide.