IQALUIT
Most of the time when you wait to book a flight it rises a little in price. For five students and one mentor from Inukshuk High School, the cost of their tickets rose by thousands of dollars.

The Iqaluit airport may be famous for its yellow exterior, but the cost of flying out of it ended up being too much for a group of students looking to participate in Cape Breton University's In.Business aboriginal youth conference. - Jeanne Gagnon/NNSL photo

The group of Inuit and Mikmaq youth and their entrepreneurship teacher, Andrew Ward, were supposed to attend the opening event for Cape Breton University's In.Business, a high school business mentorship program for aboriginal youth organized by the school's Purdy Crawford Chair in Aboriginal Business Studies. However, due to last-minute scrambling three weeks prior to the event, the cost of flights quickly rose from approximately $18,000 to $21,000. It was a matter of days, In.Business regional manager Hanwakan Whitecloud told Nunavut News/North. The plan is have them participate through twice-monthly online activities facilitated through Facebook and Twitter, as well as bring the group down for the program's closing conference in June before their exams.

Despite these challenges, Whitecloud said conference organizers felt it was extremely important to involve the Iqaluit group and called their inclusion essential. "The program is going national at this point and we wanted to get indigenous students from across the country," he said.

The program's national general manager Brian Smith said economic development was a key component to building successful aboriginal communities. "One way to get increase this is to get students into the business programs," said Smith, "They probably fail to realize there are 20 different areas these students could specialize in at the post-secondary level."

Smith said this pursuit of business education would not only benefit the students, but also their communities and families.

"Maybe after they do this program they'll realize business isn't for them," he said, "And that's totally fine, as long as we can help them make an informed decision."

Even so, Smith is flying up to Iqaluit in a few weeks to meet with the group for a one-day workshop.