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Good morning,  we’re here on a Chamber Curbside Conversation at the Community Service Center with Bill.  Bill’s gonna tell us a little bit about who they are and what it is they do.

I’m Bill Powalinsky, the Chief Executive Officer of the Community Service Center. We have three business lines that were engaged in that keep us very busy.

The first thing that we’ve been known for since the mid 70s is our Work Preparation Center, it is really key for employers to know is that we support them, as well as job seekers who maybe are facing some barriers need that first step into the employment market, so we have something called a work assessment. So basically the employer gets the services of the employee for two weeks, we pay the wage, they get the test drive the person’s skills and abilities. We’re very successful at that program as well I’d like to point out that we run the Prince Albert. Supported Employment Program, which really focuses on helping people with disability and the job market, again a very successful program. We’ve had great, great success in the following industries; service, retail, processing. We’ve got people placed in manufacturing and the service sector and professional category, so it’s very broad. We also support job seekers and their job on how to tap the hidden job market, how to brand themselves, how to market themselves.

Secondly, this is our 34th year of operation for the senior’s transportation service, and it’s something that’s very unique to PA and in Western Canada. We really support the economic inclusion, social inclusion and the inclusion for people to access services like medical personal through both our paratransit and senior’s transportation, what I’d really like to stress is that our fundraising for senior’s transportation relies heavily on fair revenue and fundraising.  So we want businesses and individuals to rally behind the seniors and their inclusion, because they are driving economic force demographically and support the Two Miles for Mary campaign.

Now third one is SARCAN a lot of people don’t realize that we’re responsible for the two processing plants, and we go by the three E’s;  Economic Input into the community, Environment and Employment. We employ people of all abilities, and SARCAN is a really, really good employer. The other thing that we do to protect the environment, believe it or not, we divert over 30 Million containers from the landfill. And that generates $3 million back into the local economy in returns. It’s quite a little bit of a hidden secret for the Community Service Center, but a high high impact for the community.

#paratransit #WorkPlacement #SARCAN #SeniorsTransportation