When Dorine Khainza arrived in Canada from Uganda in January, she didn’t know anyone in the country or where to start her new life. What she did know was that she wanted to work with her hands.

“I was determined to do things that I was passionate about. I wasn’t just going to sit in an office,” Khainza said.

Six months later, the 35-year-old, with her hard hat on and reciprocating saw in hand, worked on removing a window from a semi-detached home in Toronto under the watchful eye of her site supervisor and mentor of the day, Tim Zubek.

“It’s actually quite fun,” she said smiling, hammering a wedge between the window frame and the wall. “Destroying.”

“Destroying things to make them better,” Zubek responded.

Building Up, a non-profit social enterprise, hires individuals who face barriers to employment to work as apprentices on green renovations for homes, returning them as affordable units.

The mentor and mentee are part of the Toronto-based social enterprise Building Up. Founded by Marc Soberano in 2014, the contracting non-profit is primarily driven by social causes, and uses the homes it’s tasked to retrofit as a training ground for its apprentices — with a focus on green building.

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