UBC Reports | Vol. 48 | No. 10 | Aug. 1 , 2002

Chinook Program Helps Pick Winners

First Nations businesses partner with UBC.

By Kathy Tait

The Soowahlie band near Cultus Lake had lots of good ideas for new businesses to enhance the band's revenues and employment. The problem was how to pick those most likely to succeed.

"A significant number of new businesses fail in their first three years," Soowahlie Chief Doug Kelly told UBC Reports. "We can't afford failures."

Kelly and two other members of the Fraser Valley band found an answer to their dilemma at a two-day workshop at UBC in June.

"It was a good mix of lectures, question and answer, debate and discussion," Kelly recalls.

The workshop, part of the Chinook program of the First Nations House of Learning and the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, offered participants new tools to assess the viability of business opportunities and an understanding of how businesses achieve success. The June workshop included Band participants from Powell River, Cultus Lake, Hope and Litton.

"We identified two priority projects from the 11 ideas we had," says Kelly. "Right now we're keeping these under our hat, in part because there's competition and also we don't want anyone scooping our investors."

The June workshop was one of several projects of UBC's Chinook program, which aims to create business education relevant and useful to First Nations participants. (The name, Chinook, is used as a reminder of the common language of trade used by First Nations Peoples in earlier times.)

First Nations House of Learning Director Richard Vedan and Commerce prof. John Claxton are part of a team working with several B.C. community colleges to create a two-year diploma program in business
for aboriginal students. Top students from this Chinook Diploma Program will be encouraged to enroll in the UBC BCom Program, which they will be able to complete in an additional two years.

Claxton notes that a major grant from B.C. Gas has been vital in keeping the program on track.

- Special to UBC Reports