Business Development Grants 2020

2020 Business Development Grant Recipients

In the spirit of continued support to ʔaq̓ams individual community entrepreneurs, ʔaq̓am Community Enterprises released the 2020 Business Development Grant Application on March 16th, 2020. Applications then closed on April 17th. This year again brought a good number of quality applications. This always makes for more challenging decision-making, which is a good problem to have considering the numbers of applications we are now seeing each year.

More and more ʔaq̓am community members are stepping forward with their business ideas, and taking action. We have been fortunate to observe varying levels of growth and development in several existing business owners and we are always excited to see what new ideas come forth.

ʔaq̓am Community Enterprises is pleased to announce the following 2020 Business Development Grant Recipients.

Ashley O’Neil – Ash FireWear

Ashley O’Neil is the founder of Ash FireWear. She has a background in firefighting, and during this time, she realized that there was a need for work clothing and gear designed for women. This led her to create several prototypes, which Ashley eventually made into high quality demo versions by a company in Vancouver. Before approaching ACE, Ashley already had an order commitment for her clothing, which demonstrated to us her commitment to her vision. ACE is looking forward to supporting Ashley now into production of her new clothing line.

Shelley Collinson – Genealogy

Shelley is looking to provide genealogy services for the Ktunaxa Nation, and other First Nations communities. Shelley has over 20 years experience working with families and genealogy records and has acquired a vast amount of knowledge during this time. This type of work is valuable to the Ktunaxa and many other First Nation communities.

Sheri Corrie – Arrowhead Engraving

Sheri started Arrowhead Engraving primarily as a company offering engraving on a large variety of items. Since her start, Sheri has expanded into the market of digital heat printing, and now has further plans to expand her market with hydro dipping. We are excited to see Sheri’s business get to the next level.