Page 6 - NAABA

NAABA’s business objectives are to promote and facilitate public rela- tions of Aboriginal businesses and NAABA, to strengthen relationships between industry and membership, embrace and enhance the needs of membership to meet the vision of op- portunity and unity and support edu- cational strategies.The Association provides re- sources to assist the development of Aboriginal businesses and promote the mu- tual support of these enterprises and net- working among them—NAABA is about making con- nections.Debbie Hahn, the General Manager for NAABA, is taking steps to increase member- ship and so far, things have been going well. “Our membership has grown a lot in the last four years, with both full and associate memberships on the rise,” Hahn says. “We help members improve their businesses through educational courses and men- toring so they have the tools to make their companies run more efficiently. We also work with industry to provide work opportunities to our Aboriginal members. We have four networking events per year as well as monthlygeneral meetings where our members are able to network with each other. This is a great opportunity for our Full members to have face-to-face time with industry partners.”SUCCESS STORIES“There are some really success- ful Aboriginal businesses here in Al- berta. Some of our success stories are“We’ve our new members: those small companies that have grownreally seen suc- enough to benefit frombeing part of NAA- BA,” Mercredi adds.“Some of our smaller members since being part of NAABA havelanded some big con- tracts and they havecome back and thanked the association. Successfor those smaller companies comes with a lot of hard work but wehave helped them get through some of the doors.”NAABA hosts an AGM every year where awards are handed out to Aboriginal businesses to recognize their success and this also allows those smaller members to shine. This is an opportunity to recognize Associate Members, Industry, and EPC Compa- nies that work to promote work oppor- tunities to local Aboriginal businesses. “We’ve really seen success with ourcess with our industry awards at our AGM. We cre- ated a NAABA version of key performance indicators that parallel with our seven best practices in Aborig- inal business.”