A Portage la Prairie business is looking to do some good within the community using their toolset.

Mellisa Moman is the Receptionist and Office Administration at Hope Arising Employment Training Centre. She explains what they want to do.

"It's a community initiative we're starting at Hope Auto Repair. It's to help those in the community that may otherwise have a difficult time affording auto repair. The idea is that they can get labour for free, and they just pay for parts. It's just to help out those in our community who might need this."

They started Hope to do community initiatives like this, and they started the workshop to help fund those initiatives. She says their initial inspiration was to make connections in Portage and help out.

The starting day is Saturday, March, 28th, and their shop will be open every other Saturday.

Moman outlines how people can use this service.

"They would go to the referral agency, fill out a form, and the agency would contact us if they're eligible for the program. We make an appointment for them to get their car inspected and figure out what's wrong with it. We'll give the client an estimate to outline what all they need labour and parts wise, then we zero out the labour, they pay for the parts, and we'll order them for them."

She adds when the parts come in they'll schedule a second appointment to fix the car.

Currently, they're partnered with the Salvation Army as their referral service. She says that they could use some help.

"We are looking for volunteer mechanics that would be interested in volunteering a Saturday a month into this program. We're also looking for more referral agencies. If you want to help connect us with clients and people in the community that could benefit from this program."

If you're interested in volunteering, you can reach them on Facebook, email them at melmolman@hopearisingetc.org, or give them a call at 204-239-5492.