Project Coordinator: Honorlea Massarella
The Enterprise Development project is funded from 2006 until
2008 by the Australian Government's Natural Heritage Trust (NHT) to
meet Natural Resource Management (NRM) outcomes and provide support
to Indigenous Groups and organisations. The project's coordinator
is specifically funded to provide support to groups that request
it.
The North Australian Indigenous Land & Sea Management
Alliance (NAILSMA) is hosted by the Tropical Savannas Management
CRC (TSM-CRC). NAILSMA and TSM-CRC support the economic development
on Indigenous estate.
Many Indigenous ranger groups in the Northern Territory are
limited in their capacity, expertise and resources to undertake the
consultation process for enterprise development . Processes
include ascertaining market interest and product development
interest that go toward the development of sustainable NRM
enterprise proposals. Proposals require the undertaking of
comprehensive steps that build sustainable enterprises, such as
feasibility studies, business planning, governance exercises,
market research, joint venturing, raising capital, training
programs, infrastructure development and developing partnerships.
The NAILSMA Enterprise Development project aims to assist small to
medium sized Indigenous ranger groups in all these processes
involved in business management and development.
Project Aims
The project aims to fulfill a number of specific
obligations and desires for enhanced Indigenous economic
development that is created, driven and implemented by Indigenous
groups themselves. These include:
- Collaboration with Indigenous groups and others to facilitate
enterprise development in rural and remote Indigenous
communities.
- Facilitating six Indigenous groups to develop sustainable
enterprise concepts to the stage where they may be considered by
relevant agencies and business support institutions for funding,
further development and/or implementation.
- Developing culturally based and appropriate mechanisms for
those groups to engage with a broad suite of partners that the
management group has access to.
- Foster and support leadership, communication and engagement of
those community ranger groups by allowing community exchanges to
occur.
- Providing appropriate links with Industry to provide logistical
support, when it is requested.
- Providing up to date information to groups about funding that
may be available to them.
- Providing relevant documents to individual groups as business
develops
The project position is to provide a consistent level of support
to groups to develop their ideas into a reality and develop
long-term opportunites for Indigenous people.
