Five Aboriginal individuals will be pitching their business ideas for a prize of $10,000 in startup cash, this Saturday as part of the Aboriginal Youth Idea Challenge.

The challenge is an annual event hosted by the Enactus club at the U of S.

Pitches will be a part of the AYIC gala which will start at 5 pm at the Dakota Dunes Casino. Pitches will start at 6:45 pm with a winter to be announced at 8:30 pm.

The gala is the finale to the challenge which began with a series of workshops for Indigenous Entrepreneurs at the U of S in January.

“We had participants go through a series of eight professionally led workshops. At the end, they were able to submit their business plans and we had a panel of judges from the local business community review them and pick the top five,” says Enactus club president, Dani Nichols. “They will be presenting their business plan in front of a panel of judges. It’ll be like a Dragons’ Den style where they’ll have five minutes with a short period of questions, and then the winners will be announced.”

In addition to the winner chosen by judges, three winners will be chosen in the wildcard round for a prize of $1000 dollars each.

“We will be announcing our wildcard round, where community members have the opportunity to go on our website and review businesses that submitted a business plan but were not able to make it into the top five,” says Nichols. “The community is able to vote for who they think should win and those individuals, the top three, will be announced at our gala as well.”

Several businesses including, Neechie Gear and Bannock Express, have launched with assistance from the challenge since it began 12 years ago.

Future hopefuls looking to take part in the challenge are being encouraged to keep an eye on Enactus’ social media streams for details on next year’s challenge.

(PHOTO: courtesy Enactus University of Saskatchewan Facebook page.)