According to Shuswap activist, George Manuel and researcher, Michael Posluns, in their book: The Fourth World, “real community development can never take place without economic development, but economic development without full local control is only another form of imperial conquest”. Many communities have realized the importance of creating initiatives that will crystalize economic development outcomes. To a large extent, success in realizing these outcomes depend on planning. At EPS Consulting, we work with communities by engaging in activities that support their economic development objectives. We do this by:

• Engaging and building relationships with community partners and other stakeholders
• Developing assessment criteria and conducting interviews to know the current position of economic development activities, understand community preferences, and agree on priorities of each community we work with.
• Developing basic desk research to scope and scan for opportunities in various sectors of interest to the communities such as tourism, fishery, and forestry, transportation, hospitality, retail store
• Identifying, developing, and maintaining relationships with economic development service providers in various sectors, including government agencies, non-for profits and private institutions.
• Developing framework to support community economic development planning, specifically using the action planning process. This process requires working with communities to:

1. Develop economic development vision, which is the mental picture of their future economic development status.
2. Identify and analyze their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)
3. Identify strategic focus areas and develop long-term objectives in the respective focus areas
4. Itemize action steps that will guide activities towards realizing the stated objectives.