Creative Hub Offers $25,000 To Immigrant-Led Business In Atlantic Canada
HALIFAX—Creative Hub, a Halifax co-working space, has a new incubator program designed to help budding immigrant-led businesses get their ideas off the ground.
The program aims to support small, immigrant-owned businesses. That will start with this year’s first successful application, which will receive $25,000 worth of investment in cash and business resources.
Those resources include a year of tailored marketing from an in-house creative agency, monthly financial consulting sessions, mentorship, business development sessions, legal support, and more.
In exchange, Creative Hub will take an equity position in the business.
Similar incubators exist throughout the region, offered largely by not-for-profit organizations. That makes Creative Hub somewhat unique because it’s coming from a for-profit business.
Ifeanyi Emesih is the founder and CEO of My East Coast Experience Media.
My East Coast Experience is a business dedicated to celebrating the contributions of immigrants in Atlantic Canada. It runs the Creative Hub, as well as the Most Inspiring Immigrants in Atlantic Canada awards gala, and other similar initiatives.
“The beauty of us doing this is the fact that we come from the business world. We understand, and as an immigrant I understand, firsthand what businesses go through,” Emesih says.
He argues that by taking an equity position in the incubator company, instead of simply giving out a grant, Creative Hub will keep a vested interest.
“So that’s an additional step to make sure that the business succeeds,” he says.
Emesih, an immigrant himself, says he has experienced the same barriers that he’s now trying to address.
He says as a new arrival to Canada, it can be incredibly difficult to secure the capital you need to turn your idea into a reality.
“Being an immigrant and going to the bank… Imagine coming here, you don’t have any credit history, how do you get money? The barriers are there,” he says.
“You have an idea, and it’s either you don’t know where to get resources to support the idea you have, or you go to where you want to get resources, but you don’t have the basics you need to get those resources.”
He says he started My East Coast Experience to share stories of immigrants who have found Atlantic Canada and made it their home, all in an effort to encourage more immigrants to stay.
“So if we say this is our platform then we should also create programs that will also give business owners the opportunity to succeed,” he says.
“At the end of the day, if what we can do is help one business every year to move along, then that’s what we need to do. We can sit and talk about it all day, or we can take action.”
The incubator will choose a new business each year. Submissions for this year’s winner are open until July 1. A three-stage process will be used to select the successful applicant, which will be announced on October 3.
Eligible businesses must meet a few key criteria: they must be majority immigrant-owned, registered in Atlantic Canada, less than one year old, and have a three-year business plan.
Other than that, however, Emesih says any type of business, can apply.
Trevor Nichols is the associate editor of Huddle, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].