If a couple of words can sum up the past year at the Trail Skills Centre, they would be change and growth.
The Skills Centre has highlighted their work in their 2023 Community Impact Report, revealing big changes for the organization and big changes for the community of Trail.
“We set some ambitious goals for our work over the next five years, and we’re fully committed to achieving them,” said Morag Carter, Skills Centre executive director. “We’ve grown as an organization this past year, and we’re increasing our impact in certain areas.”
In the past year, the Skills Centre has purchased the buildings at the corner of Eldorado and Esplanade and begun an extensive renovation that will be a community asset unlike any in downtown Trail.
And after four years, some of the nonprofit’s training programs have come to an end, so new programs have launched with a focus on future needs of employees and employers.
“The core business of the Skills Centre — to deliver skills building programs to targeted members of the community — has once again been hugely successful,” Carter said.
The programs-team delivered nine provincial programs to youth, older workers and survivors of trauma and violence, she added.
“We were also approved for a new federal program, which we are delivering in partnership with the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy (CBAL).”
Much of the Skills Centre’s work aims to provide essential stability to a changing workforce, and that’s their theme looking ahead. New programs focus on emerging technology, remote work, reducing working poverty, supporting mental health, and future-proofing the workforce.
As well, in response to community needs, the Skills Centre has increased its focus on poverty reduction work with several initiatives.
The Skills Centre is a non-profit strengthening rural and industrial communities and workplaces in B.C. through workforce skills development, training services, social development and poverty reduction programming. It offers these skills training and wellness programs to all demographics to build a caring community of skilled, productive and engaged people.
For more information and to see the Community Impact Report go to skillscentre.ca.
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