Who we are

WHO WE ARE

PEOPLE Employment Services has emerged from a collaboration between people with lived experience and a variety of government and social sector agencies. During the development of the Journey Home Strategy, the Lived Experience Circle on Homelessness (LECoH) expressed a desire to contribute to solutions that address the challenges in the community. 

At the same time, the Community Action Team (CAT) formed to address the opioid crisis expressed a desire to meaningfully employ people with lived experience to raise awareness, compassion and care throughout the community. 

PEOPLE Employment Services is the result of these two ideas. Urban Matters CCC is incubating the social enterprise and is responsible for launching the initiative, designing a sustainable business model, developing partnerships and exploring suitable incorporation models. 

Our Team:

Erin 

Erin is leading the launch and incubation of PEOPLE Employment Services within Urban Matters CCC. She is deeply invested in creating a future of inclusive growth and full participation for everyone in society. Her work is rooted in the local; she finds herself most energized convening a diverse group of community changemakers to understand complex social challenges and catalyze positive outcomes. 

Erin has spent the last several years at Urban Matters CCC working with communities across Canada to align action on a host of complex challenges such as climate change, affordable housing, homelessness, and coordinating responses to the opioid overdose crisis. She is increasingly drawn to economic inclusion as one key solution to many social challenges and is working to increase meaningful workforce participation by people with intellectual disabilities or people with lived/living experience in poverty and/or addiction. 

Erin draws on years of facilitation and collaboration expertise in her work – she aims for a fine balance between facilitating group trust and moving from talk to action.

John 

John is the Peer and Programs Coordinator for PEOPLE. John has been involved with Journey Home as a member of the Lived Experience Circle On Homelessness (LECOH) since it's inception in Spring 2018. Through his involvement with LECOH, he was part of the development of the peer employment program that became PEOPLE. He is very excited to be part of something that includes in its mandate the philosophy of meeting people where they are at, and working with them as individuals to best ensure their success as peer mentors. He is a strong believer in the value that the "lived experience community" can bring to the greater Kelowna community as a whole.

Jayne Taylor

Jayne is the Indigenous Peer Coordinator and mentor to the entire PEOPLE cohort. Jayne is highly motivated by her beliefs and values of living in a world where there is a place for everyone and each person’s gifts are honored. She is a strong believer in providing services of support from a Trauma Informed Practice perspective. Jayne has experienced firsthand the importance of meeting people where they are at and building trust with the people she is supporting. Jayne does this by developing a mutually respectful relationship that is based on individual feelings and needs as determined by the person she is engaged with. She has witnessed the transformation of many lives by serving others with these core values.    

Jayne has been providing supportive services for over twenty five years in the Okanagan. She has worked in the following areas of: Education with School District #22, Health with Interior Health, Addictions with Round Lake Treatment Centre, Child Welfare with Splats’in First Nations and Complex Human Challenges in her employment with Friendship Centre’s and First Nations Governments. Jayne has always supported people to be their best selves by believing in the human ability to transform and create a new path. Jayne is honored and excited to be involved with the PEOPLE as she is passionate in her beliefs and dreams of participating in the solutions that build healthy communities.


Partners include:

- The Kelowna Community Action Team (CAT)
- Lived Experience Circle on Homelessness (LECoH)
- The Journey Home Society of the Central Okanagan
- The City of Kelowna
- Interior Health Authority
- Ki-low-na Friendship Society
- And many more.  
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