First Nations business gets support

Matawa First Nations Management officially launched their Business Support Program Tuesday with the announcement of two business support partners. Brent Edwards and Brook Mainville, both of Matawa First Nations Management, will be taking a hands-on lead of the program aimed at developing entrepreneurship and other business initiatives in nine First Nations communities.

The Business Support Program received funding in January through Ontario’s Local Poverty Reduction Fund. The program was allocated $1.2 million over the next three years.

“The main focus is around education of entrepreneurship, incubation of businesses, and evaluating our program over time - seeing what works and what doesn’t work.” said Jason Rasevych, economic development advisor with Matawa. “All of our nine First Nations communities have different priorities and they’re at different levels socio-economically. We’d like to fill in those gaps and provide a customized approach, providing culturally appropriate workshops for understanding what it takes to get in to business.”

Economic development officers from each community will play an integral role in getting the program off the ground. They’ll with Edwards and Mainville, the support partners, as they reach out to on-reserve and off-reserve community members who are interested in entrepreneurship and self-employment.

The program proposal was so well received by the provincial funding body that it is being treated as a pilot project, explained Rasevych.

“They’re looking at this as a potentially innovative model to be able to transfer to other First Nations communities in the province,” he said.

The goal for the next three years is to not only see more businesses start up through the securing of financing, according to Rasevych, but also for “businesses that are currently operating to expand and be able to provide more jobs and employment. In the end we would like to see unemployment rates in our communities decrease.”

He explained that some communities have unemployement rates of 80 to 90 per cent.

“We’re excited to get going in rolling out the work that will be a big changer for our communities in developing entrepreneurship and other business development and economic initiatives for our First Nations,” said Rasevych.

The economic development officers from the nine First Nations communities involved in the project, including five from remote communities, met in Thunder Bay this week to discuss the project. Next, they’ll travel to Toronto to meet with project partners Rise Asset Development and the Canadian Executive Services Organization.

The Matawa Business Support Program is one of seven projects in Ontario to receive funding through Ontario’s Local Poverty Reduction Fund.