This article was originally published on Shopify on June 21st, 2020.
Shopify believes in making commerce better for everyone, including reducing the barriers to starting a business and supporting more voices in entrepreneurship. For centuries, Indigenous peoples have confronted systemic racism and injustices, institutionally and otherwise. Over the last year, we’ve been developing our plans to build a global support system for Indigenous entrepreneurs, with the goal of enabling more Indigenous businesses to move online in 2020. To realize this mission, Shopify has partnered with Indigenous-led organizations in Turtle Island (Canada) and Aotearoa (New Zealand), including Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, EntrepreNorth, Te Whare Hukahuka, and Rise2025.
Together with our partners, we will co-create locally and culturally relevant ecommerce education and provide participants in their communities with free access to our platform for 6-months. In addition, Shopify will provide our partners with financial contributions to support the scale of their programs. Each organization will also receive ongoing support from our Global Indigenous Ambassador, Inez White, Te Arawa. We will unite these organizations to share knowledge and explore different approaches to Indigenous entrepreneurship education, while also learning how our platform can better meet the needs of Indigenous entrepreneurs globally.
“Through our Indigenous entrepreneurship partners, we believe we can support economic independence and well-being of Indigenous communities,” said Jace Meyer, Lead for Indigenous Entrepreneurs at Shopify, Métis. “We understand the responsibility of our role in helping create a more equitable future for Indigenous people, and that starts by partnering with Indigenous-led organizations to co-create a support system for Indigenous entrepreneurs worldwide.”
All of our partners have demonstrated a longstanding impact in their respective communities. Hear from our Indigenous entrepreneurship partners:
- EntrepreNorth empowers Indigenous and community-based entrepreneurs to build sustainable businesses and livelihoods across Northern Canada. EntrepreNorth delivers culturally-grounded business programming to early-stage entrepreneurs in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Yukon who are ready to elevate their business and community impact.
“This is a significant and timely partnership that will support our efforts to empower entrepreneurs in Northern communities to grow online business startups and sales. Taking a business online offers a powerful opportunity to connect with customers from around the world who care about supporting locally-made products with meaningful origin stories.” – Benjamin Scott, Project Director, EntrepreNorth
- Rise2025 is a New Zealand based global coaching and leadership movement with a vision to positively impact 100,000 Indigenous women by 2025. Their HIWA programme for Māori and Pacific women focuses on coaching and mentoring participants through a journey of self-development and self-discovery to an online e-commerce store presence.
“Rise2025 is an Indigenous Women-owned and led business. Wāhine or women are the magic ingredient in our HIWA program. We know when Indigenous Wāhine work together for the betterment of each other and their families we transform lives and business. Coaching from internationally trained women who all have businesses, combined with Shopifys ecommerce expertise is our secret recipe for success. HIWA is for all Indigenous women, join us!” – Rachel Petero, Founder, Rise2025
- Te Whare Hukahuka is a group of New Zealand-based social entrepreneurs passionate about using innovation as a way to positively impact the lives of Indigenous people. Te Whare Hukahuka is helping their Indigenous community leaders to develop their capability and grow world-class enterprises, with a vision to improve the lives of 10 million Indigenous people.
“Our partnership with Shopify empowers our social enterprise to achieve our dream of improving the lives of 10 million Indigenous people. It enables rebellious thinkers to overcome the barriers Indigenous entrepreneurs face when starting in ecommerce. This is an incredible example of an innovative company doing the right thing around the globe and walking their talk! The world needs more of this right now!” – Travis O’Keefe, CEO & Co-Founder, Te Whare Hukahuka
- Raven Indigenous Capital Partners is Canada’s first Indigenous-led and -owned social finance intermediary. Raven focuses on facilitating the flow of capital through impact investing to support the ongoing revitalization of the Indigenous economy. Raven builds relationships with Indigenous communities and entrepreneurs to drive sustainable change.
“Raven Capital is excited to have Shopify as a partner through its hub support model. We appreciate Shopify’s vision in seeing Raven’s Fireweed Fellowship, an Indigenous enterprise accelerator, as a key vehicle for building on the innovation of Indigenous people in Canada and helping to scale it. It’s great to see Shopify supporting Indigenous-led organizations and we hope our relationship continues to grow as ecommerce continues to grow, so we can continue to support more Indigenous entrepreneurs.” – Jeff Cyr, Managing Partner, Raven Indigenous Capital Partners
To learn more about our partners and how they empower Indigenous entrepreneurs globally, visit EntrepreNorth, Te Whare Hukahuka, Rise2025, and Raven Indigenous Capital Partners. To learn more about our long term approach to supporting groups that face systemic barriers, including Indigenous peoples, read our Sustainability Report. We are headquartered in Ottawa, on unceded and still-occupied territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation.
EntrepreNorth is a project on MakeWay’s shared platform, which provides operational support, governance and charitable expertise for changemakers. The shared platform enables more time and money to go towards achieving greater impact. MakeWay is a national charity that builds partnerships and solutions to help nature and communities thrive together.
