Breaking new ground: youth promotes international business in Northern Ontario. (FedNor Update).When Stacey Skeard graduated from Thunder Bay's Confederation College Confederation College is a provincially funded community college located in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1967, and has area campuses in Dryden, ON, Fort Frances, ON, Geraldton, ON, Kenora, ON, Marathon, ON and Sioux Lookout, ON. in the spring of 1999, she never thought she'd get her first big break in the field of international business right here in Northern Ontario Northern Ontario is the part of the province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron (including Georgian Bay), the French River and Lake Nipissing. Northern Ontario has a land area of 802,000 km² (310,000 mi²) and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it . Through FedNor's Youth Internship Program, and thanks to an innovative partnership between Northwestern Ontario Northwestern Ontario is the region within the Canadian province of Ontario which lies north and west of Lake Superior, and west of Hudson Bay and James Bay. It includes most of subarctic Ontario. economic development organizations, public and private sectors, and educational institutions, Skeard is getting the experience she needs to put her International Business Management diploma to the test. The partnership -- known as the Northwest-Midwest Alliance (NMA NMA Nederlandse Mededingingsautoriteit NMA National Medical Association NMA National Mining Association NMA NetWare Management Agent (Novell) NMA New Model Army NMA National Motorists Association NMA North Mississippi Allstars ) -- is a trade and export development project headed by the Northwestern Ontario Development Network in Thunder Bay Thunder Bay, city (1991 pop. 113,946), SW Ont., Canada, on Thunder Bay inlet of Lake Superior. The city was created in 1970 by the amalgamation of the twin cities of Fort William and Port Arthur and two adjoining townships. . Consisting of 15 members, the NMA is building business linkages between Northwestern Ontario and the U.S. Midwest. "My focus is to develop trade relationships that will help Northwestern Ontario businesses become trade-ready and to help them access the resources they need to make this happen," says Skeard, who joined the NMA project in April 2001 as Export Development Coordinator. Last summer, Skeard toured several Northwestern economic development organizations, including Community Futures Development Corporations, to provide them with training, materials and other resources to allow them to provide trade and export support to businesses. She has also organized trips for area businesses seeking to break into the potentially lucrative U.S. Midwest market. The trips included missions to trade shows and other business functions. Skeard says the road trips opened many eyes Many Eyes is an IBM project and website whose stated goal is to democratize information and to enable social data analysis ("social" in the sense of Web 2.0), by making it easy for laypeople to create, edit, share and discuss each other's visualizations. . "They (businesses) knew the market was there but they didn't realize how vast it was and how hungry it was for new products." "The trips will be followed up this spring by export-readiness workshops being held across the Northwest," she adds. |
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