WHATI/LA LA MARTRE - There's money in diamond mining; the challenge is making it last.

From left, Bruce Spencer, a training co-ordinator with De Beers Canada, Jim Stauffer, an Aurora College community adult educator in Whati, and Cathie Bolstad, director of external and corporate affairs for De Beers, try out a new online course centred on money management, called Your Money Matters, the mining company launched in Whati last week. The course is also being directed at residents of Gameti, Wekweeti, Behchoko, Ndilo, Dettah and Lutsel K’e. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

That's the impetus behind a new online course on money management De Beers Canada launched in Whati last week.

The interactive tool, called Your Money Matters, was developed by British Columbia-based Association of Service Providers for Employability and Career Training (ASPECT), a non-profit association of community-based trainers, and is licensed by De Beers, owner of the Snap Lake diamond mine, for use in Whati, Gameti, Wekweeti, Behchoko, Ndilo, Dettah and Lutsel K’e.

Made up of five modules, Your Money Matters takes users through the process of reading pay stubs, banking, managing debt, budgeting and saving – crucial skills in a territory where underground miners living in remote communities can make as much as $100,000 a year but face steep living costs.

"This is long in coming and we're kind of excited about it," said Alfonz Nitsiza, chief of Whati, a community of about 500 people where more than 10 people work at the Snap Lake, Ekati and Diavik diamond mines.

Tlicho chiefs have noted with concern the tendency among some workers accross the region to let their substaintial earnings go to waste in bingo halls and other gambling venues, said Nitsiza.

"...particularly in Whati, we have a lot of people who work in the mine that have been working there for a long time, and they've done well," he said. "Some have a mortgage now in the community and some moved to Yellowknife and bought their own homes and they have vehicles and their spouses work in some cases. Those are the ones that are successful, I may say.

"But others, maybe half, have worked about the same length of time but really have nothing to show for it ... We figure (there's) millions spent in bingo in Yellowknife."

Dennis Camsell, a Whati resident who has worked at BHP Billiton's Ekati diamond mine for 13 years, echoed Nitisiza's concerns about gambling and added the same temptations apply when residents travel outside the territory.

Recalling a trip he recently took to Alberta with a close friend, Camsell said, "On a Saturday, they went to bingo – twice in one day."

The importance of saving money takes on added urgency when considering the limited operating lives of mines, said Cathie Bolstad, director of external and corporate affairs for De Beers Canada.

Snap Lake, for instance, opened in 2008 with an expected mine life of about 20 years.

"People really have to stretch those paycheques," said Bolstad.

Educational tools like Your Money Matters – as well as a program being considered by the Tlicho Government, in which high school graduates travel door-to-door in communities to talk to householders about the importance of saving – are effective ways of deterring people from needless spending, but they'll take time to register, said Nitsiza.

"Education is the way to get there. We'll get there, but it's slow-going," he said.

A quarter of NWT mine workers do not have a high school diploma, according to a 2009 NWT Survey of Mining Employees conducted by the NWT Bureau of Statistics.

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