EMILY HSUEH
OUTAOUAIS May 12, 2021
Since the beginning of the pandemic, small businesses and self-employed people have been in limbo in terms of being able to operate. To remedy this, a new program . . .
is being offered to small business owners to remedy that.
Espace d’accélération et de croissance de l’Outaouais, or Espace-O, is offering a free program made to support these business owners in the Outaouais in keeping up their mental health. Its main goal is to be sure that they get the resources they need to healthily maintain their business and prepare for the eventual reopening.
“Self-employed workers and owners of very small businesses were not spared with COVID, and it was difficult. They don’t have [spaces] to talk about what they were facing in those times,” said Anne-Marie Trudel, a support worker for the project. “So the main idea with this project is to first give them tools around all those questions, how to react to situations which are more difficult and also give them tools to maximize their [reopening].”
The program will run from May 2021 to March 2022, with the first conference session being held on May 13, from 8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. There will be two more conferences on June 3 and Sept. 30 at the same time. They will feature other business owners from the region as guest speakers, which is something the organizers felt important to keep the sense of community.
In between those conferences, there will be a number of codevelopment meetups, which will see participants split into different, smaller groups to discuss more personally. A full schedule can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/vznfxdtt .
“The codevelopment groups is an [approach] where you sit together with other workers to discuss topics and learn from each other. They will meet two hours each month for almost a year and they’ll talk about good practices, tools they used and how they could boot their options with different strategies,” Trudel explained.
Participants will be split into groups based on language — four groups for French and one for English — with a limit of nine seats in the English section. But if the demand is high, Trudel said they would consider adding more sessions. However, the conferences are open to a much larger group.
More information and registration can be found on the Espace-O website. Those interested can also email santepsychologique@espace-o.ca or call 819-485-0517 with questions.
