National partners support Indigenous e-commerce training

Tuesday, 10 August 2021, 1:42 pm
Press Release: Te Whare Hukahuka

In the words of CEO Travis O’Keefe, “At the end of the day, this is more than just e-commerce, it's about improving family lives. Because behind every e-commerce entrepreneur we teach, there is a family and the amount of money they generate helps that family unit to overcome the hardships they face'.

With help from a partnership with Shopify’s global indigenous programme, government funding and donations, Te Whare Hukahuka the largest indigenous ecommerce training company in the world are pleased to offer scholarships totaling $1.3 million dollars to cover the $7500 fee for their three-month E-commerce programme ‘Ka Hao i te Ao’.

The Ka Hao i Te Ao programme will be commencing once again for the third year in a row on September 12th and is expected to be tripling it’s attendance from last year. This programme is an integral part of Te Whare Hukahuka’s mission statement to ‘improve the lives of ten million indigenous people’ by growing māori and Pasifika disposable income through learning about and utilising E-commerce. It is designed to help you launch and foster the growth of an online store in just 12 weeks.

Te Whare Hukahuka are honored to have a range of wonderful partners joining us to tautoko this kaupapa, and hope to build on the relationships to create a pathway to support individual and whānau wealth through learning about the power of e-commerce together.

Here are just two of our esteemed partners that make up the wider Te Whare Hukahuka support eco-system.

The first is Dave Rouse and Angel McHugh from CarbonClick. CarbonClick is a company with both the planet’s and the indigenous people’s best interests at heart.

With those grounding values in mind, this is what they have said about the programme itself:

“This is an essential opportunity that has not been available before to indigenous people with the backing of a digital E-Commerce giant. I am very passionate about the need for this in the indigenous community globally, as well as in our backyard.”

They believe that e-commerce itself is a very important kaupapa because:

“The world and the wheels of commerce are moving to elect e-commerce and indigenous communities have been slow to uptake these ideas and will be left behind without some significant action. The traditional ways that indigenous peoples have traded are going to be under serious threat with climate change and this programme diversifies and protects our future income stream that will carry them forward in the generations ahead.”

Climate change is something that they are passionate about. They believe that Indigenous people in general have had the least effect on climate change but will be the first to feel the effects. “It will hurt our brothers and sisters in the pacific first and then continue to wreak havoc on our own māori population soon thereafter so the opportunity to build some wealth to help deal with that through a long term channel is very important.”

The second of our wonderful partners is Laura Keil-Hall from the Pacific Business Hub and Samoan Business Network. Like Te Whare Hukahuka, the team at the Pacific Business Hub strongly believe that when we enable and empower our communities, it will enrich our lives, their lives and the lives of others.

“I think that it's a great opportunity for our Pacific and Māori whānau to be able to access such scholarships.” Says Laura.

“As we've seen with the impacts of COVID-19 lockdowns, it is so crucial for our communities to learn about E-Commerce. The lockdown highlighted the need for this as many of our businesses didn't have online presence let alone access to selling their products &/or services online when that happened. Having an E-Commerce platform also provides them access to a global audience and access to global markets and potential customers.”

To apply for this programme you must be of māori or Pasifika descent and be able and willing to commit to at least 6-8 hours a week over the course of 12 weeks.

In order to be eligible for a $7,500 scholarship applicants must complete the application form and take place in and complete all five of the ‘Comfort Challenges’.

Applications for scholarships close on the 29th of August. The programme is set to begin on the 12th of September.

For further information on applications and the programme itself, we urge you to visit the following link:

https://www.twh.co.nz/

Carbon click URL

Pacific Business Hub

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