Offering support to local small businesses is an important facet of the Drumheller and District Chamber of Commerce (DDCC).
To further support local businesses, the Town has collaborated with DDCC to help the Chamber begin building relationships with new businesses opening in the community, and also offered a series of initiatives to help support businesses through the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we can offer businesses is really not until their doors are open,” says DDCC Executive Director Heather Bitz. “We’re not like Community Futures, who are able to help businesses with business plan writing, and providing those sorts of supports, when you’re planning your business and getting it up and running; really, the services we’re able to provide as a Chamber of Commerce come after the doors are open.”
Through this collaboration, new businesses will be asked if they would like the Town to share their information with the Chamber. While this will allow DDCC to begin building relationships earlier with new businesses, Ms. Bitz says gaining new memberships is not necessarily the goal.
Memberships have continued to remain stable this year, with a total of 237 memberships and 20 new business memberships.
To help businesses struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chamber began a Shop Local initiative in late 2021, which was supported through funding from the federal government.
This funding allowed DDCC to establish multiple initiatives to support local businesses, including revising the local gift certificate program-formerly called Dino Bucks-into the Chamber Cash program, and producing promotional videos for Chamber members.
“That was all done with grant money that we were able to secure; those monies don’t exist now, and we’re pretty happy with the initiatives we were able to do,” Ms. Bitz says.
A total of 16 businesses took part in the Love Local promotional video initiative, and the Chamber also created its own community video.
These videos were then shared to the DDCC Facebook page and YouTube channel.
According to Ms. Bitz, the videos reached over 22,000 viewers on Facebook and have been viewed 1,364 times on YouTube.

MH Enterprises has secured funding through the Alberta Community and Social Services and the Workforce Development Initiative that will have an immediate and meaningful impact on the labour market in Drumheller.
The funding is from the Alberta government and will expand MH Enterprises’ ability to serve its clients.
“These are really essential impactful tools. They are going to make a difference to so many people, and that’s what we’re about,” said Marina Paarup, MH Enterprises executive director. “It is an expansion of services that are specifically targeted to our rural community to benefit our rural employers and our rural job seekers. “We are over the moon excited about the potential of the new services.”
The first major change they will see is the ability of MH Enterprises to provide access to all Albertans to a compressive self-directed resource centre.
“What it is going to do for us initially is open our agency as a resource centre for the public, you don’t have to be a client to come in and have free access to self-directed services of the centre,” explains Paarup. “They are funding us to become a service centre for all Albertans. Whereas before it was more targeted towards an unemployed Albertan, now it could be a student, an employer, or anybody who just wanted information.”
This means residents will be able to walk into MH Enterprises and access information, services and support, and access to government and community resources, career and education planning tools and resources, information on local labour markets, online and physical job banks and access to equipment and technology for job searching and applications.
This service will be offered in Drumheller, as well as its new permanent office in Stettler, and MH Enterprises will continue to do outreach to its rural areas.
MH has also recruited a specialized job developer who will work with employers to meet their needs. This will include placement assistance, including funded placements.
“Previously, we had funded placements for target job seekers, such as specialized services for youth, and specialized services for persons with disabilities. This fills in the gaps in between. So funded placement will be available for unemployed Albertans without being in a specialized group. It is a significant investment in rural for employers to develop new hires.”
These placements can be up to 12 weeks.
The funded placement also adds the ability to have funded training for employees. Job seekers can receive funded training for work exposure. This can be done before the person is hired, or it can be done on the job.
“When an employer needs certain training that has to occur within the job site, we can also fund that within the funded placement. So it is going to pay for wages and initial training for the new hire.”
She adds the program has some opportunities for career laddering.
“We can take some case by case where they can career ladder within the workplace. Let’s say there is a current employee who wants to be promoted to another position and they don’t have the skills, we can consider that case by case. The biggest thing is providing flexibility to employers and job seekers because really, everybody’s needs are different, and accommodating those needs specifically is what is going to make this successful.”
Paarup said they have been working on getting this program since April and were awarded the contract, which began on October 1.
In my 28 years, I have never seen a program so extensive to assist both local employers and job seekers.”