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Listening to the podcast Entrepreneur from Monocle is entertaining and informative all the time. This time it was the mother/daughter duo who visited Haiti and then went on to set up business to grow vanilla.
They talk about the challenges that they have faced in creating a new business but the most important learning is the fact that no amount of aid is enough to create well-being and wealth. What is a needed a sustainable solution that is rooted in the local context.
The solution as these individuals see is aroun respecting the local culture, traditions and building a business that is sustainable with a focus on employment and entrepreneurship.
The parallels in Indigenous Australia is no different. The focus on providing social services, community programs is good but if there are not rooted in the needs of the people, in providing a solution in the context of the problem and more importantly creating the right opportunities for a sustainable solution then we have lost.
Working with Indigenous people in my work, I see a real confidence and focus to create sustainable solutions that work in the context of the culture and are not creating a dependence cycle on the government.
