The first ever Rural Manitoba Workforce Summit in Neepawa was held last Feb. 12, 2024. The said event was organized by the CEO of Westman Immigrant Services who formed the Rural Manitoba Immigrant Employment Council. We were able to interview Enver Naidoo before the actual summit to know more about the organization and the said summit. “We know that there’s some great resources and supports available when immigrants settle or resettle in communities. There’s Don Walmsley that runs an incredible organization here in Neepawa. I know for myself as a CEO of Westman Immigrant Services, we run similar programs and services for immigrants in Brandon, Russel and Cartwright. But we’ve seen some gaps in supports for employers and so when you think about large scale employers or small to medium enterprise employers, are there resources available for them to be able to understand how to better track, hire and maintain immigrant talent and we started looking nationally and recognizing that there have been immigration landscape more maturity in other communities, in other provinces and we came across immigrant employment councils that have existed. Prior to our start in the Rural Manitoba Immigrant Employment Council, this existed in all other provinces except for Manitoba and Saskatchewan.”, said Naidoo.

Knowing of the non-existence of an Immigrant Employment Council in Manitoba, Naidoo mentioned that they connected with the National Immigrant Employment Council Network to be able to learn about best practices and to adapt to local realities. In 2022, they started the Rural Manitoba Immigrant Employment Council and in 2023 they had their first Rural Manitoba Immigrant Employment Council Workforce Development Summit with representations from all regions across the province.

Through the first summit in 2023, they realized the need to provide an opportunity for individual communities to share their unique realities and what the opportunities are. They realized that aside from helping the immigrants or the job seekers, it’s also important to work with other stakeholders as well that would include the post secondary institutions, Chambers of Commerce, Trade Associations and the local communities. So the important role of Rural Manitoba Immigrant Employment Council is to connect all of these players or actors to make sure that there is coordination. This led them to organize the first local summit in Neepawa and after that they will be going to other communities during the month of February to March.

After the summit here in Neepawa, NACTV was able to chat again with Enver Naidoo together with Don Walmsley, Neepawa Settlement Executive Director and they shared the result of the summit. They mentioned that there were around 16 employers, representatives from the Town and the Chamber and the Settlement sector. They shared that the process was a collaborative process and the goal is to bring in some tools and strategies resources that could support the employers. When asked about the challenges that the employers raised during the Summit, Walmsley said “Challenges with things connecting it, typically it boils down to communication approaches, what information is shared, when it’s shared through both parties and it was really a good opportunity for employers to explain what frustations and challenges they have, what they like to do, what they can offer is really quite exciting.”