Aspiring entrepreneurs have lengthy benefited from the innovation ecosystem on the College of Waterloo, an setting the place entrepreneurship and innovation excel amidst a novel mix of co-op, work-integrated studying alternatives and customised wrap-around helps.
This conventional innovation ecosystem, nonetheless, wasn’t reaching the wants of aspiring Indigenous entrepreneurs.
In 2023, United School launched an Indigenous entrepreneurship incubator, Flint Hub, and a diploma in Indigenous Entrepreneurship (INDENT). Drawing inspiration from GreenHouse, Flint Hub supplies the infrastructure to assist Indigenous college students in furthering their entrepreneurial aspirations. The incubator provides a vibrant neighborhood of assist, rooted in Indigenous knowledges, values of kinship, abundance and reciprocity.
Since its inception, Flint Hub has awarded roughly $20,000 in funding and supported three ventures, with many extra alternatives on the horizon.
Connie Roy, an Ojibway woman from M’Chigeeng Ontario and hairstylist of 17 years, is one in every of three Indigenous entrepreneurs who earned $4,000 in a current pitch competitors at United School will obtain assist to scale her enterprise.
In 2018, Roy based the primary cellular hair salon in Waterloo area, Consolation Cutz, a handy hair service that primarily serves people with mobility limitations. By way of her work, Roy helps to provide her purchasers confidence, whereas maintaining them protected within the consolation of their very own houses.
She sees her purchasers at their most susceptible and witnesses first-hand the affect that her providers have on their vanity and psychological well being. “My clients are so happy,” she shares. “For some, they get communication and a visitor. I treat them like they are my own friends and family, and they trust me.”
“The Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island have always been great entrepreneurs,” says Rick Myers, principal of United School. “Colonialism repressed the entrepreneurial activities of Indigenous Peoples, but not their entrepreneurial spirit. Indigenous individuals and communities are making enormous strides in a host of commercial areas, including tourism, resources and energy.”
To speed up this progress, Indigenous Peoples want entry to a enterprise training that displays their particular business pursuits and their culturally distinctive manner of participating in entrepreneurship and financial improvement. There additionally must be a possibility to study instantly from the experiences of Indigenous entrepreneurs, with Indigenous knowledges, values and tradition as its basis.
Flint Hub and INDENT: Supporting the entrepreneurship journey
INDENT is a six-course program that extends the sources and helps supplied by United School into a tutorial providing and permits college students to graduate with a diploma from the College of Waterloo.
“Indigenous entrepreneurship programming goes beyond innovation to the very heart of economic equity and justice,” says John Abraham, educational dean of United School. “At United College, we see our role as supporting the next generation of Indigenous entrepreneurs as they write this exciting new chapter in a long history of commercial and entrepreneurial activities.”
Jacob Crane, program supervisor of Flint Hub, provides: “The goal of the Indigenous entrepreneurship program is to shed light and guide students towards fully utilizing the tools they already have. Our role is to support them on this journey.”
Jacob Crane (proper) throughout recruiting occasion in Calgary on the Tsuut’ina Nation Powwow
As an impartial enterprise proprietor, Roy shares that the extent of assist and sources supplied by Flint Hub was very significant in serving to her develop a marketing strategy with a transparent sense of path and pushed her to observe her ambitions. “I found comfort in talking about the business stuff without being judged by what I know. It’s a learning curve opening a business and the guidance of Flint Hub helps,” she says.
“Just knowing you have supportive people who are going through the same thing as you are, means everything.”
Trying forward, Flint Hub and INDENT will proceed to create a pathway for Indigenous entrepreneurs to have a significant affect.
Crane envisions Flint Hub turning into the primary incubator for Indigenous entrepreneurship in Canada. “I really do believe that our cohorts are going to continue to grow and that we’re going to see alumni go after some large-scale funding opportunities.”
The scope of this programming will broaden nationally as partnerships are deepened with post-secondary establishments throughout Canada in communities with historically excessive Indigenous populations.
Within the short-term, Roy is pursuing goals of opening a bodily salon house utilizing the cash she was awarded at two Flint Hub pitch competitions. Roy’s new salon can be Indigenous-designed and he or she envisions it serving as a hub to promote art work and different merchandise made by native Indigenous artists and entrepreneurs. She additionally goals of launching her personal hair product line.
Talking to the affect of her work, Roy shares, “It is such a rewarding job knowing you are making people feel good about themselves. And I always say to myself ‘I’m going to make her look beautiful and feel great’ because if I can increase someone’s self-confidence, that is everything to me.”
