With a micro-loan of $1000, 3C Challenge offers Indigenous youth a hands on opportunity to create a business, balancing the 3C's (Community, Culture & Cash), creating as much value as possible in 30 days.
In June 2016, Leslie Varley, Executive Director, BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centers (BCAAFC) invited University of Victoria's Gustavson School of Business (UVicGSB) and UVic's National Consortium for Indigenous Economic Development (NCIED) to co-create and deliver her vision for the Indigenous Youth 3C Challenge (3C Challenge).
The 3C Challenge is an innovative and experiential program to introduce Indigenous youth to entrepreneurship in a culturally appropriate way and provide skills for long-term meaningful employment. It is simple, but the decisions and implications are complex. The 3C Challenge successfully completed in August 2021 created lasting impacts:
- 675 Indigenous youth participants completed the challenge.
- 130 teams completed the challenge.
- A team of 15 Indigenous facilitators were trained and led the entire project.
- 50 challenges were completed across the province of BC, generating new revenues in communities from the teams' social innovation.
Hosted by BC's 25 Friendship Centres, fifty 3C Challenges will be delivered to 1,000 Indigenous youth by March 2021. The opportunity for learning supported by peers and within home communities starts with a three day workshop, followed by a month long Challenge. Participants work in teams with facilitators and mentors to explore areas of interest and develop and run mini businesses.
Primary Challenge objectives include:
- Support Indigenous entrepreneurs to discover the market opportunities available in their home communities
- Provide a "real world" experiential entrepreneurship learning that enables transforming opportunities into well-planned ventures
- Offer social innovation, collaboration and capacity building that affects the whole community
The three-day workshop focuses on the practical aspects of owning a business: opportunity identification, evaluation of opportunity fit, business model development, and timeline and milestone creation. With access to a micro-loan of $1000, teams conceive a viable mini venture to create value and profit during the 30-day Challenge.
Engagement with local communities is encouraged, and a community mentor coaches, encourages and supports the teams throughout the Challenge. Teams establish budgets, access materials for their product/service, pursue markets, and meet deadlines. After loan repayment, each team collaboratively decides how the profits will be distributed.
Finally, youth learn best from other youth. In March 2019, 3C Challenge teams shared their stories with over 1,000 youth at the BCAAFC's Gathering Our Voices event. The teams were not only positive role models for the youth, they had an opportunity to see themselves as positive influencers in their community.
The positive impacts of the 3C Challenge are multifaceted. Indigenous youth are able to define and engage in the business world on their terms in a way that is most meaningful to them. Whether they succeed or fail, they gain valuable business skills, experience and knowledge.
Exceeding expectations, one team made bath bombs with a cultural component. This team repaid their $1000 loan and went on to generate an additional $2500. Another team donated their total profit of $1700 to a salmon enhancement fund. Moreover, not all teams required loans, and most that did repay them responsibly.
Perhaps, most importantly, celebrating both successes and failures as learning opportunities assisted in reducing barriers. Through practical application, youth tested their skills and abilities, and gained the confidence to pursue business ownership or further education. For example, a participant from a January 2019 Challenge enrolled full time in college in September.
Thanks to the 3C Challenge, there will be more conscientious and passionate young business owners entering the marketplace, equipped with the tools necessary for them to apply their abundance of cultural knowledge to succeed financially within their communities.
From an economic development perspective, the 3C challenge has been affective in four ways.
1. Engagement
The 3C Challenge has been successful in advancing Indigenous economic development through the engagement of Indigenous youth. This project has specifically propelled the social innovation sector of the economy. These Indigenous youth – ages 30 and under – have had the resources and space to explore and make a balanced impact in their community by creating mini ventures. Through the creation of these innovative businesses, we have seen lasting benefits across numerous areas including cultural preservation, community well-being, and profit generation.
2. Role Modelling
The 3C Challenge has given Indigenous youth the opportunity and confidence to not only lead their own mini ventures, but represent their communities. As a result, the project has helped produce young and confident Indigenous role models for other Indigenous youth to follow. When the participants in the 3C Challenge succeed in the competition, it inspires other youth to take part and follow in their footsteps. The overarching goal and impact, is that this challenge provides youth with the self-confidence and skills needed to achieve a prosperous future through improved and increased participation in the economy, while honouring their traditional values. This wise practice approach is a highly important example to set for the younger Indigenous generation in Canada.
3. Revenue Generation
The 3C Challenge impact - 675 participants, 130 teams, and many successful mini ventures - has generated thousands of dollars in new revenue to Indigenous communities. The cumulative amount of revenue generated directly for the young business owners, in addition to the indirect revenue generated as a result of increased economic activity, has resulted in thousands of dollars in profit to Indigenous communities.
4. New Business and Job Creation
Inevitably, the new ventures that were launched following the 3C Challenge have led to more businesses and greater in-community job opportunities. We have seen mini ventures become highly successful within communities, which encourages the collaboration between Indigenous youth. Young Indigenous adults coming together to build something that they are passionate about is a very powerful intangible result of this challenge. In addition, this new-found passion also contributes to economic development. There has been a number of graduates from the 3C Challenge who have continued on with their businesses and turned it into a source of income for themselves and ultimately began to hire others to build the business in their community.
Thanks to the 3C Challenge, there will be more conscientious and passionate young business owners entering the marketplace, equipped with the tools necessary for them to apply their abundance of cultural knowledge to succeed financially within their communities.
The 3C challenge is highly customizable and therefore replicable. It is a program that allows for the young entrepreneur participating to have full involvement in the design of the challenge. Participants are being given the responsibility and opportunity to choose what they want to do with a loan of $1000, and the loan amount could be adjusted for future similar challenges and be a much smaller, greater, or no loan. What they choose is often influenced by the cultures and upbringing of the students and is a great way for new methods to be uncovered organically. It also offers a way for educators to learn about Indigenous business methods and culture-specific ways of thinking. This can be brought into other business education such as universities where others can learn from Indigenous methods and to increase Indigenous representation. Furthermore, the fact that we were able to offer this challenge in 25 friendship centers in communities across the country points to the overall replicability.
Similar to replicability, the 3C challenge is highly customizable and therefore can be tailored and adapted to other communities. The project structure can be brought into any community where young entrepreneurs can learn Indigenous methods in order to increase Indigenous representation in the business environment.
What lessons have been learned?
1. Indigenous Wise Practices
The design of the 3C Challenge is rooted in Indigenous culture to covey and anchor business concepts in an appropriate way to the community of Indigenous youth. The 3C Challenge Programs have reconfirmed the ongoing lessons of the wise practices approach to successful community economic development. Our approach is very focused around wise practices, which is defined as "locally-appropriate actions, tools, principles or decisions that contribute significantly to the development of sustainable and equitable conditions" (Calliou and Wesley-Esquimaux 2010, 19). This wise practice approach is informed by a review of literature on best practices in Indigenous business, economic development, and community development. Following the completion of the 3C Challenge, direct lessons that rise from our practices include the documentation, learning, and overall impact of the unique cultural practices that take place in each community and region with which we collaborate. The impact that this challenge has on Indigenous youth in Canada is like a domino effect for Indigenous economic development. In other words, the positive impact and adaption that we see through the success of our young Indigenous entrepreneurs translates to the overall wellbeing of Indigenous individuals, businesses, and communities in Canada.
2. Delivered in Community
Since the implementation of the 3C Challenge, we have learned that our in-community delivery increases accessibility for Indigenous entrepreneurs. The 3C Challenge delivers culturally sensitive and community tailored entrepreneurship education to support the full participation of Indigenous youth in the Canadian economy through mini venture launching. The 3C Challenge was designed by a collaborative team of Indigenous and industry leaders, accomplished business professionals, and distinguished educators from the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria. The challenge is breaking down the barriers of access to education through in-community delivery by our diverse and experienced faculty.
3. Customizable Learning
The 3C Challenge was delivered in Indigenous communities and customized to fit each young entrepreneur's needs and interests. Participants and teams learned how to be an entrepreneur or become a better entrepreneur on their own terms, in their own territory. We have learned that there is no best practice, "one size fits all" approach to research and economic development. The 3C Challenge is versatile, and enables us to adapt and customize the challenges to the unique cultures, resources, and specific goals of each Indigenous community and group of youth.
4. Indigenous Economic Development
We have learned that there is a large vacuum of capacity for Indigenous entrepreneurship that needs to be rapidly filled for Indigenous people to take their rightful place in the Canadian economy. Through the 3C Challenge, we've learned that there is an urgent need for effective leadership in Indigenous communities. Therefore, an increase in young Indigenous entrepreneurs leads to a greater number of Indigenous leaders in the long-term who will enter the business market with the skills and knowledge to adapt to the external changes in their environments, and build the internal capacity to take advantage of economic opportunities.