CED FOCUS AREAS
Early Childhood Education
In the East Kootenays there is currently a severe lack of trained Early Childcare Educators (ECEs) which means that childcare facilities are not able to run at full capacity. This has a large economic impact for the region as parents are unable to work full-time. Since August 2021, CFEK has been convening stakeholders around the region to discuss this challenge and look for solutions through the East Kootenay ECE Roundtable. You can view the write-ups from the past six meetings here:
March 2024 | September 2023 | June 2023 | April 2023 | February 2023 | December 2022 |
DATA FOR DECISION MAKING
Accessing and using community and economic development data in decision making is important for communities. It allows communities to guide strategic planning and make decisions on where to put time and effort, it strengthens grant applications, allowing organizations to access funding more easily, and it also allows communities to measure the impact of projects and decide which projects are the most important at any given time.
For the past two years CFEK has been commissioned by ETSI-BC to run training webinars for communities across the Southern Interior region.
In early 2022 the Using Data to Your Advantage webinar series aimed to provide training for smaller communities on how to access and use data for community decision making. The key was to grow knowledge and expertise of those working on community economic development projects within the region. Check out the resource document which is extremely useful and contains links to a wide range of data sources and information.
In Spring 2023 the training focused on particular topics of need across the region for the Sharpen Your Skills, Learn from Peers – Continue to Use Data to Your Advantage webinar series. Sessions included Using Data for Disaster Planning and Recovery, Using Data to Support Housing Needs and Labour Attraction and Using Data for Economic Impact and Planning. You can view the recordings and presentations from this series here.
NonProfit Support and Training
Community Futures East Kootenay has run Board Development training for nonprofit organizations in both the early parts of 2022 and 2023. Sign up to receive our CED updates to be informed when further training is planned.
In September 2023 we launched a pilot project which aims to build the capacity for the nonprofit sector in the East Kootenay region to enable organizations to look at developing social enterprises to support diversified and sustained funding. Find out more and look at the resources here.