Jennifer Wiebe, the Administrator of the Neepawa Chamber of Commerce, spoke to the Rotary Club recently and this episode covers her speech and the following questions.

It was just two months before the onset of pandemic restrictions that Jennifer Wiebe began with the Neepawa and District Chamber of Commerce. Originally working one day a week under then-administrator Barb Bohn, Jennifer took over from Barb in 2022 and has been running things ever since. That meant that although she’d been with the Chamber for two years, she’d never had the opportunity to run any of their signature events including, perhaps most significantly, the Chamber Fair.

The fair and other activities of the Chamber including their Business After Five events, Chamber Bucks, that keeps spending within the community, and promoting the group insurance plan are all known successes.

Something new that Jennifer was able to share is her experience participating in Manitoba Chambers of Commerce events which connect her with the wider province. In particular, a recent Advocacy Day they held in Winnipeg allowed her and her fellow Chamber of Commerce Directors to meet with 14 MLAs with various portfolios within the provincial government.

Neepawa came up several times, Wiebe says, and generally in a very positive way, thanks to its continued economic growth and vitality. One of the people that she met with was the Minister of Transportation, who commented on Neepawa’s current efforts to manage heavy traffic on Highway 16, a route used by employees of the HyLife pork processing plant and also the soon to be location of the new hospital. As well she spoke with the Minister of Immigration, who himself is of Filipino heritage and has visited Neepawa on multiple occasions, about streamlining the credentialing programs for overseas professionals arriving in the community.

The Chamber of Commerce currently has 108 members, and Wiebe believes that there are at least twice that many businesses in the Neepawa area. While some outliers might be members of the Gladstone, Carberry, or Minnedosa Chambers, Neepawa’s catchment area stretches a significant distance to the north. Many of those businesses might not even realize that they are eligible for membership, or what benefits they might see from the work the Chamber of Commerce does.