SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF) held its inaugural Action Entrepreneurship: Growing Young Enterprise workshop in Yellowknife earlier this week.

RBC representative Kyle Sheppard (L) participated in a workshop discussion with local entrepreneurs, government, and community business leaders organized by the Canadian Youth Business Foundation in Yellowknife on Monday. The CYBF was in town to promote the relatively unknown in the North services and assistance they can provide Northern entrepreneurs. - Walter Strong/NNSL photo

CYBF is Toronto-based non-profit organization that focuses on working with young business-minded people, aged 18 to 39, to take them from business idea to a fully developed business plan, with post-start up guidance.

Small business loans tailored to the needs of entrepreneurs are also available through the CYBF. In partnership with the Business Development and Investment Corporation (BDIC), the organization is able to provide small business loans of up to $45,000 without the usual collateral requirements.

“It’s based on character, not collateral,” said Joelle Foster, CYBF director for Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nunavut and NWT.

“We’ve helped over 6,000 Canadians launch small businesses since we started in 1996,” said Julia Deans, CYBF chief executive officer. “We helped 800 in the last year across Canada, and we’d like to do more here.”

The organization has lent assistance to a very small number of NWT businesses, said Deans, likely less than 10.

“People don’t really know about us up here,” said Foster, who was born in Baker Lake, NWT. “We need to get the word out that there’s a non-profit here that really wants to help you succeed.”

The workshop brought together young Yellowknife entrepreneurs, local not-for-profits, government and business people to work on ideas for moving forward and expanding the notion that there’s more opportunity in the North than employment with a resource company or in government.

“You’ve got a lot of people here thinking they’re going to go south to university and stay there, or they’re going to join a big mining company so they don’t have to think about being an entrepreneur,” Deans said.

The CYBF is ready to hear from anyone with little more than the seed of an idea and the willingness to put in the hard work to make it grow.

“Only about 10 per cent of people who come to us have a well thought-out business plan,” said Deans. “We are used to people coming to us and saying, ‘I have an idea, what should I do?’”

Yellowknife’s Sarah Erasmus, whose Erasmus Clothing has been in business now for three years -- growing from just one employee to four -- said that an entrepreneur's skills are constantly called upon as his or her business grows.

“Being an entrepreneur, there are always challenges to growth,” Erasmus said. “There’s always questions surrounding growth.”

“You do one thing and master it. Once you’ve got that down you say, ‘Alright, what’s next?’”

The workshop was held in the offices of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency (CanNor). Although CanNor focuses on economic growth surrounding large projects, CYBF’s mandate fits in with fundamental "why" of CanNor’s work.

“We’re not doing this to import labour,” said Matthew Spence, director general for CanNor’s Northern Projects Management Office in Yellowknife. “We’re trying to foster local opportunities.

“People tend to think of mining as just digging rocks out of the ground. We see mining as an opportunity to develop other industries, like accounting, graphic design, lawyers, medical services.”

“Mining, oil and gas figure so prominently in the North,” Spence said. “But there’s a lack of eduction and understanding surrounding entrepreneurship. Youth look at being a heavy equipment operator or a mechanic instead of running a business that supplies operators and mechanics.”

“That’s the next evolution. We have to move from being workers to service providers.”

The BYCF will have a few bursaries available, depending on funding, to bring young entrepreneurs from the North to Toronto this May for a large entrepreneur workshop.

There are also opportunities for business people in Yellowknife and the North who want to connect as volunteer mentors with young business owners.

More information on the BYCF and their programs can be found at www.cybf.ca.