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Young indigenous entrepreneurs gather in project

Indigee – Indigenous Entrepreneurship – seeks to gather 75 indigenous entrepreneurs for development of enterprises and business ideas.

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Creative Saami, Nenets, Veps and Komi entrepreneurs from the entire Barents Euro-Artcic will work together in this project, which will last for two years.

Indigenous entrepreneurs from the Barents Euro-Arctic Region are invited to participate in Indigee – Indigenous entrepreneurship, which is a project led by the International Barents Secretariat. The aim is to provide training and cooperation opportunities for young indigenous people, eager to develop business based on indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures.
 
- The Indigee project is very exciting since we’ll gather creative and active youth from different indigenous peoples. We believe it’s possible to run enterprises in the northern regions in tune with nature. I hope this will be shown and evolved in this project, says project manager Lars Miguel Utsi.

Currently, Indigee is recruiting up to 75 participants from the four countries of the Barents region – 20 participants each from Sweden, Finland and Russia and 15 participants from Norway.

Participantsshould be between 18-28 years old, have an enterprise or a concrete business idea, have knowledge and understanding about indigenous peoples’ culture and traditions and preferably have their business related to that. Participants should be equally distributed between men and women.

During the project the participants will be provided tools and expert help to develop their enterprises and business ideas – making effective business and financing plans, business management, etc. Three conferences will be arranged: in Vilhelmina, Sweden in November 2010, in Enontekiö, Finland in March 2011 and in Nar’yan Mar, Russia in August 2011.
 
The Indigee project is cooperation between the Saami Association of Sweden (SSR), the International Barents Secretariat (IBS), the Norwegian Saami Association (NSR) and the Saami Association of Finland (SSG). The project is also in close cooperation with the BEAC Working Group of Indigenous Peoples and several indigenous organizations in the Russian Barents region.
 
The project is funded by the Interreg IVA Nord programme, Nordic Council of Ministers, Norwegian Barents Secretariat, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Norrbotten County Council, Saami Parliament of Norway, Region Västerbotten, Finnmark, Troms and Nordland County Councils, Saami Parliament of Sweden and the Saami Council.