Lubcheon Nov 12,2015

President Marieze welcomed the 16 members/guests to this Nov 12th meeting.....little did we know, the date was significant separating Remembrance Day and the horrific Paris and Beirut terrorist atrocities. 

Our guest speaker was Denise Blashko, executive Director of the South Okanagan Chamber of Commerce. Denise took over the role in early September, coming from a Community Futures position in Penticton and a range of regional economic development roles in BC and Alta.  She came at a busy time with the Festival of the Grape event upcoming and the strategic planning time of year at hand. She has an affinity and passion for making a difference in rural communities and small towns so will meld in nicely here!

Denise led us though the many roles that the Chamber plays in Osoyoos, Oliver and OK Falls and there is a bunch of them! Included were the business walks, the AGM and Awards evening, promotion of business nights (9 so far this year), benefit plans for small businesses to access, production and distribution of business maps (20,000 this year), and the Harvesting Diversity event recently hosted. 

It was noted that membership in the Chamber by business is only at about 30% of total businesses here and in Oliver, slightly higher in OK Falls. More members in general and new board members would be welcomed! Also noted was that profit dollars from events goes back to members in the form of training, promotion and advertising. 

The next Business to Business meeting is next Wednesday, Nov 18, at the Osoyoos Museum and everyone is welcome.

A good presentation and message from a comfortable and talented speaker...we would hope to see Denise at many more of our meetings. 

In other updates, it was announced our club will not be hosting and inbound youth exchange student next year  as we could not find an appropriate outbound student from OSS. We will try again next year!

Food bank donations were received at the meeting and it was discussed and decided that all members would be asked to donate $10 at the next meeting to help the food bank out for the holiday season. Also Linda will investigate taking on a family for Christmas as we have done before. 

Dates to note are the Board meeting Nov 26th following the noon meeting and the Christmas Party on Dec 4th to be celebrated with the Oliver Club. 

Have a great week!

And if I could have put the French Tricolor overlay on this in honor of Paris, I would have.