The Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Services Association (SAMSSA) turned 10 years old Jan. 1, a milestone for the Northern Ontario mining cluster that brought a wry smile to the face of its executive director.
“Who said we’d never make it?” said Dick DeStefano at the association’s annual general meeting on Dec. 4. “That doesn’t happen because one or two people do it; it’s because everybody sees value in building what we want to sell worldwide and we have to compete.”
And SAMSSA continues to expand its influence. Closing out its 2012 year, memberships with the association are up 10 per cent over last year, the organization is bringing in web-advertising revenue for the first time, and there is a comfortable $46,000 surplus in the bank.
Kirk Petroski, president of SAMSSA’s board of directors, said the cluster is successful because of the partnerships it’s established that help bring technology to market. Innovation institutions, government agencies, financial institutions, post-secondary institutions, research and commercialization agencies all work together to foster the success of local innovations.
“The cluster has given me and many others the opportunity to build a business, to create a technology, bring it to market and, most of all, make meaning in what we do,” he said.
Filling the gap in skilled trades will be integral to the cluster’s continuing success, and Laurentian University is poised to play an active role in closing that gap with the establishment of the Goodman School of Mines. Laurentian announced the creation of the school last year, followed by the announcement of a significant endowment by Ned Goodman, CEO of Dundee Corporation.
But other city initiatives are also taking place.
Vicki Jacobs sought to gain support for the Greater Sudbury Learning City Initiative, which seeks to address the skills gap in the city.
There is a large number of people who are unemployed, or unemployable, leaving a number of skilled jobs vacant, said Jacobs, the initiative’s chair. Sudbury boasts top-quality daycare services, libraries and post-secondary institutions, but has lower literacy rates, fewer high school graduates and fewer people with university degrees than the rest of the province.
“We live in a community where you can earn a lot of money with very little education, but when jobs or technologies change, or if a career change is required, people here often have trouble adapting,” Jacobs said. “Why is that? Maybe they’ve lost their literacy and math skills because they didn’t use them often enough; maybe they’ve lost their learning skills if, in fact, they ever developed them.”
The learning initiative aims to change that by promoting quality, lifelong learning starting in early childhood, from setting up literacy programs to holding seniors’ lecture series.
“We need to promote the idea that education and learning is not just the responsibility of the education sector and that learning doesn’t end when you get your diploma,” Jacobs said. “The responsibility for learning and education is for ourselves, for our families, for our employees. We all benefit from having a better educated, more creative, more flexible population, particularly in the workplace.”
Nicole Tardiff is targeting an even younger audience. As chair of Sudbury Mining and Technology Week, she organizes and promotes the annual event, which invites elementary and high school students to participate in activities that promote mining as a viable career option.
Annually, the event reaches 900 students in the city, and the 2012 edition was one of the most successful in its 18-year history, attracting lots of interest from people wanting to participate and record levels of sponsorship.
“Through your support you’ve helped with our city’s economic growth, community building, scientific and technological innovation, and really a sense of what it means to be a tight-knit, progressive community that’s being recognized as an international centre of mining and technology excellence,” Tardiff said. “Increasing awareness about our industry is also the key to sustainability and attracting our youth into our businesses.”
Last year Sudbury Mining and Technology Week incorporated a technology component to better reflect the evolution of the industry, and the organizing committee is in the process of rebranding the event, with an announcement of its new identity expected in the new year.
The goal is to educate youth, promote careers in the mining and technology industry and raise awareness about the industry’s successes to Sudbury and the region. Continuing support from industry, through providing ideas, sponsorship and volunteers, is integral to continuing that mission, Tardiff said.
“Together, let’s show how innovative we are and how proud we are of the mining and technology industry here in our city.”
