This Profile of Effective Practice is one of fifteen stories examining how innovative, community-based initiatives are using comprehensive approaches to improve social and economic conditions on a local level.

The Greater Trail Community Skills Centre is located in Trail BC. Trail is on the Columbia River in the West Kootenay region, 18 kilometres driving distance from the Canada-USA border. Trail's social and cultural history has been shaped by the Italian immigrants, the first of whom came to Canada to build the railways in the 1900's and others who have come directly to work at the smelter.

The Skills Centre serves primarily the Greater Trail area, which consists of 5 municipalities and 2 electoral districts with a current population of 20,000. It employs 25 full-time and part-time employees and contractors, providing services to thousands of local residents. As the Board's Past president, Wake Williams states, "The high pace of change and restructuring in our society continues and the effects of that are being strongly experienced here in the more rural areas of B.C. The Skills Centre continues to play a very important role in providing support to those affected by change in assisting them through transition in their working lives.