Vivre Saguenay: when an advisory firm takes a seat on the organizing committee

Mosaïca Conseils takes part in the Vivre Saguenay event as a member of the organizing committee. This is not a sponsorship: it is a commitment on the ground, consistent with everything we advocate with employers in the region.

The context: a region that chose to attract

Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean long watched its talent leave. Today the trend is reversing: people are coming to settle here, start families, start businesses. But that reversal remains fragile. With 1.3 unemployed people per vacant position and 27.1% of the population aged 65 and over, every person who chooses the region counts, and every avoidable departure costs the whole community dearly.

It is in that context that Vivre Saguenay was created: a major gathering that introduces the city and its region to people considering settling here — newcomers, international workers, students, families weighing the move. Employers, settlement organizations, municipal services and residents come together in one place, around one shared intention: making people want to stay.

Mosaïca's role: connecting the job and the community

Our place on the organizing committee follows directly from our practice. Engagement after engagement, we observe the same phenomenon: a worker can be well integrated at the plant and still leave the region, because their family never found a place in it. Attraction events are one of the rare moments when you can act on both levels at once.

On the committee, Mosaïca brings what we bring to our clients: an intercultural reading of immigrants' needs, a bridge to the region's employers — many of whom take part in our training and in the Regional Roundtables — and the conviction, backed by data, that the quality of the welcome is a measurable regional advantage.

The impact: from a visit to putting down roots

For attraction, an event like Vivre Saguenay shortens the path from “I'm thinking about it” to “I can see myself here”: meeting an employer, a school, a sports club and a potential neighbour on the same day turns an abstraction into a concrete plan.

For retention, the effect runs deeper still. Immigrants who have already settled find there what our training calls the first reference point: faces, institutions and networks that turn a territory into a home. And the region's organizations see there what we keep repeating at the Roundtables: successful integration is a shared responsibility, between the employer, the worker and the community around them.

That is exactly the movement Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean has set in motion: moving from one-off welcoming to lasting inclusion. Vivre Saguenay is one of its showcases; our daily work in companies and municipalities is its mechanism.