The Interlakes Economic Association hosted a public meeting with roughly 18 representatives from different agencies to help inform the Interlakes community on fire recovery and the different avenues of help they offered.
“My phone has been ringing this morning saying ‘hey, that was awesome,’ so we’re all pretty pleased with how it went,” said Steven Brown, president of the Interlakes Economic Association. “It was awesome.”
Around 60 people were in attendance.
A number of people were lined up to talk to the representatives individually after the guest speaking portion of the meeting to get information on how to get assistance, most of them, according to Brown, hadn’t planned or thought they qualified for assistance until that meeting.
The common theme among the guest speakers, ranging from the Red Cross, Community Futures, B.C. Forests Lands and Natural Resources and more, is they’re here to help, whether its mental health, agriculture or small business.
The agencies found that many people felt they didn’t qualify because of the language on the applications forms. Some organizations, like the Red Cross, have started to take in more information from applicants to make more people eligible.
Meeting face-to-face with the agencies was much needed, judging by the atmosphere of the attendance, most of them in the older generation and many of them struggling with the internet or don’t have the internet at all, he said.
“We’re not in the internet era. We don’t want to go online and try to fill out forms and email,” said Brown. “We want to talk to people. We need to sit down with someone, tell them our story and get help to fill out those forms and find out before we go through all the work to fill out that form and get rejected.”
Representing four companies, Brown was able to get that sit down and said every response was positive.
“Overall, it was a great start to the community taking a positive attitude to the future and trying to put the horror stories of the fires behind us,” said Brown. “Let’s take what we learned and make it a positive if we can. This is what the people needed.”