The Campbell River & District Chamber of Commerce endeavours to provide opportunities with the chamber and the greater community throughout the city and the regional district for students — either high school or college — to gain real world work experience.
One such project is the chamber’s recently-completed new website.
Mary Ruth Snyder, Executive Director explains how the new website came to be, “About a year ago we discussed our intention of providing student work experience to Diana Camerin, guidance councillor at Timberline Secondary, as well as our desperate need for a new website and that it be as local as possible. She connected us with their IT Instructor Tylere Couture who proceeded to introduce us to Isaac Morrow who at the time, was a grade 12 student — primarily self-taught website developer and computer programmer. Isaac agreed to work with us on creating a new website.”
“This was my first truly large-scale project and working with a client,” Isaac says, “I’ve gained a fair bit from this experience and can’t wait to learn more about this area of work, as well as creating more websites in the future.”
Snyder says, “We have a great new website hosted on Vancouver Island and built by a local student. Both our new chamber website campbellriverchamber.ca and our website collaboration with BC Hydro majorprojects.ca utilize the Vancouver Island-based Bambora gateway for our e-commerce payments integration. Our payments consulting partner who helped with our deployment is a B.C. company — Kubera Payments who are partnered with the BC Chamber of Commerce and specialize in payments systems, security, and solutions.”
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The new website has a list of the many cost saving benefits the chamber offers through their membership with the provincial and national chambers, the latest news, task force and industry reports, webinars on new policy developments, and links to all of the network and community partners.
“The 21st century is about connectivity, creating a vibrant community, and we believe our new website is an excellent example of dynamic community connection,” says Snyder, “and to encourage connection we are hosting a virtual gathering Let’s Chat every Thursday at 4 p.m. so people can just get together, chat and connect.”
Morrow graduated with honours, as the class Valedictorian, from Timberline Secondary in June, 2020 and is now attending the University of Victoria majoring in math and computer science. Over the years, he had competed in the Skills Competences Canada web development competition, coming in first place two years in a row for the regional competition.
Morrow has also participated in a local hackathon with a few friends, expanding his love for the study of computer science, but also the creative aspect behind it as well. When he’s not studying, he plays the occasional game of disc golf, learns a new song on the guitar or, of course, carries on computer programming.
“Our experience with Isaac has been exceptional and working with him on this project was a dream!” says Mary Ruth, “He was very eager to learn and expand his knowledge of website creation, both the framework as well as the creative side.”