Four Indigenous entrepreneurs will have the life-changing opportunity to work on their startup ideas
| Four Indigenous entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to be involved in a 3-month entrepreneur development program at Australia’s largest community of scalable tech startups, Fishburners. Barayamal is teaming up with Fishburners to deliver “Barayamal’s Budding Entrepreneurs Program.” In May 2017, Barayamal organised Give Backathon – a national charity hackathon that helped four Indigenous charities (First Nations Foundation, Australian Indigenous Leadership Centre, The Streets Movement Organisationand SevGen) by providing tech-based solutions to overcome their problems and increase their social impact. The winning hackathon team received a 3-month membership at Fishburnersvalued at $900 per team member (total of $4,500). However, in the spirit of the event and giving back to the community, the hackathon team “paid it forward” by donating their prize (back) to Barayamal so four Indigenous entrepreneurs could have the life-changing opportunity to work on their startup ideas and help their communities. Indigenous employment sits at a low 48%, and while Indigenous businesses are 100 times more likely to hire Indigenous people, less than 1% of Australian businesses are Indigenous owned, despite representing 3% of the population. Through disempowerment and lack of opportunity, the Indigenous community in Australia has the highest rate of suicide of any community in the world. By empowering Indigenous entrepreneurs, we could help re-shape these statistics and our communities. Barayamal’s Budding Entrepreneurs Program aims to accelerator the success of four Indigenous entrepreneurs by providing the 3-month membership at Australia’s leading tech startup hub (Fishburners) and an Entrepreneurship Development Program that will deliver essential training and education workshops, and mentoring from successful Indigenous entrepreneurs from Barayamal’s Business Accelerator Program. Founder of Barayamal, Dean Foley said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs can make a valuable contribution to their communities and help close the gap through entrepreneurship. “Barayamal’s programs and events support Indigenous entrepreneurs to achieve that,” Mr Foley said. Barayamal’s Budding Entrepreneurs Program comes in the wake of other successful programs by Barayamal that have supported the growth of the Indigenous startup ecosystem despite receiving limited financial support. “There is only so much you can do with limited financial support but we love what we are doing – helping other Indigenous entrepreneurs achieve success and empowering youth with invaluable entrepreneurship and coding skills which benefits them and has a positive ripple effect within the community.” The meaning of Barayamal Barayamal means ‘Black Swan’ in Kamilaroi language and the goal of the program is to help Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander people build successful businesses through entrepreneurship training and programs. Black swans were first seen by Europeans in 1697 but before that, Europeans had only known of a white swan. In this instance, the black swan represents Indigenous entrepreneurs who have not been noticed in the world for their innovative businesses. Barayamal plans to show the world that Indigenous entrepreneurs exist and they can also build global businesses. Further information: Dean Foley Barayamal p: +61 458 980 232 e: [email protected] —END |
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