Maryna Kondratska wears a yellow hard hat whenever she steps onto a jobsite. As a commercial painter at New Generation Painting Inc., it’s standard safety gear and is nothing remarkable, unless you ask her.

To Kondratska, that hard hat means everything.

“I still keep it and like wearing it because it reminds me where everything started,” explained Kondratska.

It’s the same hard hat she received when she completed the EmpowHer program, a multi-sector collaborative project between Manitoba Construction Sector Council (MCSC), Film Training Manitoba, and Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. The program was designed to prepare women for employment in the construction, film, or manufacturing industries in Manitoba.

For Kondratska, it was the door into an entirely new career.

She arrived in Winnipeg from Ukraine in 2022, searching for a safer place to build a life. At first, she and her husband picked up small residential renovation jobs. He had some experience from back in Ukraine, where he handled renovations for the four coffee shops they owned. But construction was new territory for Kondratska. She quickly learned finishing work including taping, painting, and whatever else the jobs required.

When she heard about the EmpowHer program, it sounded like exactly what she needed: a chance to turn those informal skills into real training.

“Our three organizations got together because we recognized we all needed women in trades,” explained MCSC Executive Director Carol Paul of the partnership with Film Training Manitoba and Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters that ran in 2023-24. “We offered women job readiness and safety training, and then they branched out into hands-on training in one of those three sectors to explore their careers.”

Kondratska chose the painting stream of the program.

“It prepared me to start work and I could advertise myself as being specialized in some fields,” Kondratska noted.

The real takeaway from the program wasn’t just technical skills, though. Confidence was the real tool she walked away with.

“Everything in the program was designed to give us confidence,” she added. “All of us were newcomers, and you always have doubts about if your English is good enough or if someone will understand you. Most of us have high degrees of education back home, but here we can’t express ourselves properly. But being surrounded by other immigrant women – many of whom had also just arrived in Canada – I felt for the first time that I was not alone. There were people who cared, who supported us, and who helped show that there was a path forward.”

Paul saw the same thing in the program.

“It was incredible because we had 45 women from different cultures,” she noted. “They all took care of each other. It was amazing to see the journey of the women going through the program.”

The program was just the beginning of their journeys though. For Kondratska, it initially led her to a job at Virkus Painting, which stemmed from a meeting facilitated by then-MCSC Program Coordinator Nermine Awad (now MCSC’s Finance Manager) at a reception for EmpowHer program participants.

“She asked me how things were going, and I explained that my English wasn’t good enough to understand what I needed to do to pitch myself successfully to employers,” recalled Kondratska. “But she said she could introduce me to someone she knew.”

She did exactly that by introducing her to Samantha Virkus of Virkus Painting, who was also at the event. That meeting served as a sort of job interview for Kondratska, and soon after, she had her first job in the industry.

Her time there eventually ended with seasonal winter layoffs, but by then she had experience, confidence, and connections. She soon landed a new role with New Generation Painting. And these days, the jobsite feels even more like home because her son works there too. Fresh out of high school and starting his own career, he joined the same company.

For Paul, stories like Kondratska’s show the ripple effect programs like EmpowHer can have.

“These programs make such an incredible difference in people’s lives,” Paul remarked. “It opens up new avenues for people who may not have otherwise tried the trades. We often follow the career path of our parents, and to break away from that takes such incredible strength. For those that come from other countries in particular, they go through even more struggles to change that trajectory.”

That’s what Kondratska’s hard hat represents. It’s a reminder of her choice to step into a new industry, a new country, and a new life that’s still taking shape, one coat of paint at a time.