I often get asked, “What is Community Economic Development (CED)?” And while you might get varied answers depending on who you ask, I once heard it described as definitions of each word – community, economic, and development. And so, while CED has complex moving parts, we can simplify it using this way of thinking. Community refers to a collection of persons, economic refers to employment, and development refers to bettering or improving your overall well being.
Therefore, it revolves around a community centered approach where people can come together to take action and generate solutions to common problems. In the end, those solutions will provide better opportunities.
As a regional organization, Community Futures West Yellowhead (CFWY) is just one player, amongst many (community leaders, not for profit, and residents) who gather around the table to contribute ideas towards a more inclusive, diverse, and sustainable region. We focus on broader community issues (community development), while also supporting the typical economic drivers of jobs and business (economic development). Both approaches depend on each other to make a community sustainable and thrive. We provide programs and tools that contribute to the success of new start-ups, business retention, and expansion, job creation, and maintenance, while also promoting our communities’ gems that attract industry and people to move to the West Yellowhead region.
One such program is our Business Visitation Program, where we check in with our local businesses to see how we can help them. Sometimes that help is by providing individual resources so they can stay in business or maintain employees, sometimes it’s working with a local business to grow or expand, and sometimes it’s about identifying challenges they’re facing. Often, those challenges are felt amongst other businesses in the region, such as the labour shortage. By working together with our local and regional partners, we can collaborate and analyze what those challenges may mean for the community and region, and figure out the best solutions to address them.
At CFWY, we aim to understand the issues that we all face, whether as business owners or residents. We want to improve that level of understanding to determine available options, and how can those options help our communities create a better quality of life for everyone.
If you want to learn more about what we do, give us a call! We are always happy to answer any questions.
Written by Heather Cokes
