Internship Organization and designation: Business Innovation Project Coordinator, partnership between Ecotrust Canada and Prince Rupert District Chamber of Commerce
Roles and responsibilities: Janets role involves assessing the business community to plan events and supportive approaches to foster a business culture of collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurial thinking to bolster and diversify Prince Ruperts business community. She developed city-wide surveys with a variety of local stakeholders to better understand the local economy to find ways on how the Chambers service offerings can better support its 250+ business members.
With the announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the downturn of the local economy following the governments mandate that only essential services can operate, an all hands on deck approach was needed to support Prince Ruperts businesses. She initiated Chambers weekly conference calls to help community members share resources. The goal was to connect community partner organizations, and government representatives from all levels with the business community collaborating on how to operate and be resilient during this unprecedented time. This evolved into a weekly roundtable with the aim to give the Chamber insights on developing follow-up action items to support its membership such as information gathering and sharing, business development opportunities, community capacity building, entrepreneurialism, and policy advocacy.
Whats Next: Janet hopes to continue my work in economic development in a community in northern Canada because she sees a lot of support needed for their economies to be sustained and grown. There is such a strained capacity in human resources, and she sees lots of opportunity for her to make an impactful difference to meet the potential of building a community that thrives economically, socially, and environmentally through skills and new perspectives gained through my placement and my educational training.
How MEDI Helped: My interest in remote northern communities began in my Economic Development Masters program where I learned about the economic and social disparities between Canadas north and south. Through writing two research papers on topics related to these communities with the guidance of MEDI professors, I became intrigued by working in Northern Canada because these places are often overlooked. I found this opportunity to make a meaningful difference in Prince Rupert through being notified from one of many emails from the MEDI office about internship openings. I also gained experience consulting with small communities from a field study portion of a MEDI course where I worked with the Township of Wilmot to provide recommendations on how to develop its land to increase more business attraction to the community. This project further propelled me to be more interested in supporting small communities.