The Thompson Chamber of Commerce held their annual general meeting on Jan. 23 and introduced their president for the coming year, Oswald Sawh.
Past chamber President Linda Markus introduced Sawh, and says that she has high expectations from Sawh, and also touched on her time as president.
"The executive has been a really great team to work with," said Markus, "although I've been responsible for chairing that team, I never felt as though all the burden was on my shoulders, I felt that as a team we worked very well together."
Markus and Sawh both believe that it should be an easy transition and Sawh's intent isn't to come in and try to make a big shake up, but rather stay the course and build on what the Chamber of Commerce has already accomplished.
"We're going to continue to build, we'll be sticking with our weekly lunch meetings and bringing in guest speakers," said Sawh, "you see the diversity of people that come to those meetings, it's not just owners and managers of small businesses, it's also individuals from social enterprises and from government, and the one thing that we all have in common is that we want to have a strong Thompson."
Sawh came to Canada when he was seven fromGuyana, the only Commonwealth country in mainland South America. He grew up in Winnipeg and came to Thompson not long after graduating fromuniversity inaccounting. A former city councillor, Sawh is manager of community-based programs with the Communities Economic Development Fund (CEDF), a provincial Crown corporation. He is also chair of the board of directors of Men Are Part of the Solution (MAPS), non-profit organization that provides support, counseling, and education to men who want to improve their relationships with their intimate partners and families, and active with the Thompson Humane Society.
The Thompson Chamber of Commerce is one of the few in Manitoba that meets on a weekly basis, often times with guest speakers from all facets of industry. In the past year speakers from Vale, Smook Contractors, the Province of Manitoba, Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, Thompson Unlimited, CIBC, among many others spoke at the weekly meetings.
"I think information is power, and from my background in public education I wanted to give people the opportunity to be informed," said Markus, "when we talk about our variety of guest speakers we've had our meetings, I always felt that it was important for our membership to be informed and to be aware of what was happening in and around our community."
Sawh's intention is to keep that channel of information open between Chamber members in order to address the needs of different organizations and assist with the Chamber's plans and direction.
Sawh also spoke of Thompson's economic diversification and moving towards the decommissioning of Vale's smelter and refinery in 2015.
"Thompson has been diversifying itself for a long time now," said Sawh, "in my opinion, we stopped being a single-industry town a while ago; there's absolutely no doubt that Vale is a major employer, and with any major employer if there's issues, or hiccups or downsizing it will affect the city, but I've never thought of Thompson as being a single-industry town and over the last decade we've diversified our economy and I think we'd like to diversify even more. Thompson is much more than a mining community and I think people are slowing starting to get that."
