Thank you.
As was stated, I'm Heather McKenzie. I'm the president, yes, but I'm also a community member of the Williams Lake Indian Band, which is basically the urban community of Williams Lake. I'm on council there, but more importantly, I've been the education manager for 20 years now. In that time I have not only assisted that early learning to develop into future jobs, but I've watched children over the years graduate, go on to post-secondary, and be hired directly in our very fast-growing economic community.
We have an employment service centre right within our community that works directly with CCATEC, which is more the urban connection there. We also hold career fairs. Those career fairs basically focus on those youth and young adults who will basically grow our self-government treaty. Four Shuswap communities in our area are basically moving on to stage five.
Some of the barriers there include, yes, grade 12 and driver's licences, but we continue to work on those age groups. It is not just from birth on; for people from their forties to early fifties there seems to be more of a barrier. But below that is a group that's growing in education, and I'm just so proud of that group.
We are also very supportive of the language and culture. I think once we overcome those barriers for our people there will be a real pride that we can move forward and overcome any kind of education and employment barriers by knowing our grassroots.