An apprenticeship program connecting recent Queen’s graduates with local businesses has expanded this year after a donation from Ottawa-based philanthropist Alan Rottenberg.

The Queen’s Career Apprenticeship Kingston program, which began as a pilot in May, will support 35 positions by 2019, up from its current 10. 

Graduates who enter the program will have the first four months of their salaries paid for, while a local employer funds the remainder of the year-long program.

The program not only aims to help graduates from the arts and humanities enter the workforce, it’s also meant to incentivize graduates to stay in Kingston.

“It strikes close to home because I have two sons who graduated in arts, one from Queen’s, and I saw how their struggle to get a job and some of their friends try to get a job—young men, young women—and I thought, ‘This is crazy,’” Rottenberg told Global News.

“We’ve got to get these people employed.”