Prince George, B.C. – There is strength in numbers, and that’s what AIMHI is counting on.

Tomorrow,   they will hold what is hoped to be an annual day forum to bridge the gaps   and connect employment professionals throughout the region.

The daylong session is set to take place at the AiMHi facilities on Kerry Avenue in Prince George.

“It’s to bring everyone together to talk about barriers, talk about employment, talk about networking, talk about job sharing opportunities” says Joy Magnell of AiMHi.

“What we were noticing is that everyone is so individualized these days, they are not coming together and networking together” says Magnell “Everyone is off doing their own thing and we really need to bring everyone together and have this talk about how can we all work together and work towards employment for the people who are looking for jobs.”

Magnell says different employment agencies are looking for ways to overcome some of the barriers they face in their various communities “It could be barriers of dealing with misconceptions about those with disabilities,   for instance, there may be some who think everyone we (AiMHi) deals with is in a wheel chair, so let’s talk about that . It could be dealing with immigrant and multi-cultural issues, newcomers to our community. So   it could be any kind of barriers people face in the community when they are doing their job search.”

Magnell says the forum is not based on finding employment solutions for just those with disabilities, “This is something we thought we would try, get everyone networking and creating this network.”

She says discussions will focus on ideas to overcome some of the barriers   and a report will be generated at the end of the daylong event which will be shared with all participants. “We can look at some of the other committees and see what they are facing and how we can work better together to help make things happen.”

Magnell says that sharing of knowledge will go a long way to help employment organizations from having to ‘reinvent the wheel’  “If we do face some problems that come our way, maybe there’s someone who can give us some ideas on how we   can overcome those situations.”