OHBA Local of The Year

OHBA LOCAL OF THE YEAR

Spreading the Word

PETERBOROUGH AND THE KAWARTHAS HBA IS USING SOCIAL MEDIA AND SCHOOL CONNECTIONS TO MAKE A BIG IMPACT

BY TED McINTYRE

You might say it was an Instagrammable moment as Peterborough & The Kawarthas Home Builders’ Association’s Executive Officer Rebecca Schillemat, President Garnet Northey and Marketing & Communications Coordinator Shanelle Jackson took the stage with other PKHBA members to receive Local of the Year honours Sept. 19 at OHBA’s Annual Conference at the Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls.

Whereas social media was perhaps underutilized in the past for PKHBA, it was now a not-so-secret weapon in helping separate it from OHBA’s 27 locals for this year’s distinction.

“OHBA is a grassroots organization—our success is tied to the success of our locals,” observed the Ontario Home Builders’ Association’s new president, Louie Zagordo. “This local has made significant contributions. They actively interact with their local government for their members and the industry at large. They’ve also begun to partner with local school boards to encourage careers in the skilled trades to help combat the looming trades shortage. And they actively use their voice on social media and beyond to educate their local community and advocate for the needs of this industry. To top it all off, the two staff members heading it have been with the association for just over a year and have already made massive strides.”

Indeed, Schillemat, whose previous work included a tenure with the Peterborough and The Kawarthas Association of Realtors, was hired in July 2021, before being promptly promoted to Executive Officer the following month. Jackson, for her part, only came aboard as a part-time employee that September.

“I was surprised to win,” Schillemat concedes. “We’ve only been here a year, but we’ve put a lot into the association since we’ve started. We have actually been recognized by two different chambers of commerce in our region for our marketing, for our revamped social media. Some months the numbers are 1,000% higher, year over year, but even compared to good months, we’ve had at least 100% increases.”

PKHBA’s face-to-face work has also been impactful. “We do a lot of work with our school boards,” Schillemat says. “In Peterborough, we are very lucky that we have Fleming College, which has a Trades and Technology department. And Fleming’s Frost Campus in Lindsay has a Heavy Equipment Operator program. We work with Fleming to promote skilled trades and have members who sit on their program advisory committees. And the local Catholic School Board is very involved in our association. They make sure that what they are teaching the high school kids is what’s needed in the industry.”

Schillemat herself and several PKBHA members volunteer with area junior achievement programs to promote skilled trades and guide them to the next step to become business owners themselves. Part of that education is to illuminate youth on the fact that there is money to be made in trades professions.

“It helps that our MPP here, Dave Smith, spoke at the chamber in the spring and said, ‘I pay my plumber as much as I pay my lawyer!’

“And you also don’t have nearly the education costs to be a plumber compared to being a lawyer.”