Youth develop entrepreneurial skills

Radio, health, curling and film production are some of the service and business ideas developed by a group of young Aboriginal entrepreneurs during this summer’s SAYbiz program.
“I’m starting a radio station on my reserve,” said Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek’s Justin Hardy. “Right now I’m just waiting for the funding to be approved and then I’ll be able to start building.”
Hardy is looking to get the radio station on the air by the end of 2014, so he can provide information about community events as well as outside news to community members.
“(It involves) a lot of paper work, planning, applying for land use, a broadcasting licence, music rights licence,” Hardy said. “I just have to change my business model and then I’ll be able to get approved for funding.”
The SAYbiz (Summer Aboriginal Youth Business) program was delivered over nine weeks, from July 2-Aug. 30, to 18 youth from nine Robinson Superior communities by Anishinabek Employment and Training Services (AETS) in partnership with the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre.
Aimed at youth from Grade 10 up to 29 years of age, the SAYbiz program included seven weeks of research and development activities in the communities as well as one-week pre-program and post-program retreats at Confederation College in Thunder Bay.
Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek’s Dairyan Hardy developed a healthy eating workshop to promote wellness among community members.
“Lots of people are obese with high blood sugar, diabetes,” Dairyan said. “I just had these recipes and we all made the food together.”
Dairyan also shared the nutritional value of the different foods used in the workshop with the participants.
“Everybody was like ‘wow, that was good,’ so it went really well and it was really fun,” Dairyan said.
Dairyan said many community members were surprised to discover they were eating too much sodium when she explained how much should be consumed on a daily basis.
Gull Bay sisters Grace and Lisa Esquega are looking to develop a curling service for new curlers at the new curling rink in Whitesand.
“For the sport I love so much, we wanted to give back and teach the kids how you can get into the organized sport,” said Grace, who has been a competitive curler for the past nine years. “It can potentially be a career.”
The two sisters plan to kick off their service in December once the curling ice is ready for the season.
“We’re going to partner up with the Northern Ontario Curling Association,” Grace said. “That is one of their goals — to promote curling on the reserve — so it would be a great partner for us.”
Grace said curling is a “very social” sport.
“It’s given me good qualities that I can put towards my career,” Grace said. “It’s given me the determination and competitiveness that I need in the field I want to go into, which is business.”
Thunder Bay’s Kaine Kingla is looking to develop a film production company, noting he plans to study Film Production at Confederation College beginning this fall.
“This program actually showed me a lot how entrepreneurship is — it showed me the business ideas,” Kingla said. “When I was going into it, I thought it was real simple, but coming out of it, it’s not as easy as you would think. So it showed me you have to have committed people, you’ve got to be committed.”
Kingla said AETS and the Innovation Centre were “very helpful” and supportive with his business idea.
“It gets you on the right track,” Kingla said.
Elder Grace Esquega enjoyed helping the youth during the SAYbiz program.
“I’m here to encourage them,” Esquega said, noting she and her husband operated a logging business for about 42 years.
Esquega said a little encouragement can go a long way.
“All my husband needed was somebody to believe in him, and then he started to believe in himself,” Esquega said. “There was no employment at all in our community back in Gull Bay, so that’s what got him going — somebody believed in him.”