Pender Harbour's young adults and business community gathered last Thursday (April 22) for an event geared at encouraging young Pender Harbourites' entrepreneurial ventures as a way to keep them on the Coast after high school graduation.
"We've seen a drain of our young people moving off the Coast and staying off the Coast, and we want them to stay," said Rick Harmer, Pender Harbour and Egmont Chamber of Commerce president, who spearheaded the event called Live Here, Work Here, Stay Here.
Harmer likened the evening's program to the TV show Dragon's Den, "without the insults," in that it would feature both would-be entrepreneurs and potential financial backers.
He then quoted Robert Kennedy's line: "There are those who look at things and ask, 'Why?'; I dream of things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'" He declared it a 'Why not?' evening, and launched the presentations.
On the entrepreneurial front, Cameron Meakins pitched a plan for a longboard building business, honing in on some key reasons to situate the business in Pender Harbour: a youth culture that loves the sport; the presence of longboarding champion Scott "Scoot" Smith; and the fact that the community hosts the annual Attack of Danger Bay longboarding race during the May long weekend.
A second entrepreneur, Alexander Evans, pitched a plan to address the community's lack of affordable housing by launching a container home building business.
On the lending front, attendees heard presentations from Claudia Redfern, co-director of the provincially-funded Aspire self-employment program; Sharon Anderchek, loans manager for Community Futures Development Corp-oration of the Sunshine Coast; and Kim Darwin, a mortgage consultant with the Mortgage Group.
Redfern explained that people who qualify for the Aspire business start-up program receive an allowance of $300 a week for 48 weeks plus 10 weeks of training and guidance in developing a business plan. The program is available only to people who are on employment insurance (EI), have collected it in the last three years or have been on parental EI in the last five years. Redfern also noted that the program website, www.aspireselfemployment.com, provides links to templates for creating business plans, marketing plans and other business-planning documents.
Darwin spoke about helping home and landowners obtain higher-rate mortgages when they can't qualify for bank financing.
Anderchek said that federally-funded Community Futures provides both start-up and business expansion loans, as well as helps people develop their ideas and put together business plans.
"For those of you who are thinking about something and uncertain and are afraid to get up at a meeting like this and lay yourself bare, come in and speak to someone in our office and we're really happy to help you develop your idea," she said. "We'll be very frank with you; we don't pussyfoot around."
Harmer wrapped up the evening by humorously quipping that, if nothing else, Pender Harbour could probably run a thriving crematorium in the near future.
"But the thing is," he said, "That would be a terrible indictment of our community if that turned out to be the number one business."
