Lakota Youth Development CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

Through the immersion of our elders into this process, we were able to create ‘new’ traditions based from our Lakota culture in the way of welcoming our winged relatives ( bees) and new youth members and creating sufficiently elaborate public ceremonies that also educate and give an opportunity for the public to experience a living culture adapt and adopt new ways of being as new aspects of life develop. This kept the cultural integrity as we developed the enterprise model and how we communicate that as value added products to the public was instrumental . Our regular monthly gatherings provided ongoing advice and direction as new relationships were built in promoting our products. As a result , youth were able to develop marketing tools such as brochures, enhanced labeling and leverage resources to tell our ‘honey story’ through social media. Adjustments were made to our marketing to focus on our value added message to gain interest from the tourism industry and museums. Other venders began promoting our products via word of mouth and brochures and were able to direct business to us. Potential long term business relationships are now be cultivated.

Business plan development required considerable involvement with our mentors to create a viable three year business plan for Honey Lodge youth led enterprise. Youth , elders, mentors and the tribes Economic development office met for several planning sessions and completed a SWOT analysis. Youth learned important market research techniques for their business . Marketing mentors help youth develop a strong, targeted marketing component that fit in coordination with 3 year goals. Activities included preparing sell sheets for volume sales and creating displays for new products. The plan was submitted to potential funders for future support to expand the Honey Lodge brand. Creating a separate Honey lodge website was key to keeping relationships with buyers as well as cultivating new relationships such as tourism gift shops and local coffee shops. Honey lodge kept its initial business all while growing and developing which gave a glimpse of how this new enterprise will need to manage multiple efforts and develop growth plans all while not skipping a beat with current sales, promotion efforts and opportunities.

Apprentices were extremely valuable as they quickly were able to gain the knowledge and confidence to become promoters and educators about our products as well as them becoming able to be our cultural ambassadors, answering questions about Lakota culture, history and our connections to the products we offer through vendors table at local farmers markets, booths and events and visitors and tourism groups from other states with one group from Germany that proved to by a cultural experience for our youth apprentices as well. In addition, they were able to benefit from meeting the State Governor and State Secretary of Tourism for promoting and photos that they learned can be extremely valuable in promotions.

Key lessons learned

A lesson learned is that as much as we wanted each of the three entrepreneur initiatives to advance at the same pace, we could only focus on one at a time, which resulted in slower progress for the other two initiatives. Our first focus was the bee keeping and honey sales and that one is doing the best of the three efforts. Honey Lodge is now an up and running youth led enterprise with growing buyers . We have learned that by marketing outside our local area we were getting the best responses and interest from tourism in our state has been good with those sites that focus on Native art and history. We struggled with support for youth employees beyond what we had set aside in this budget. Even though there is great interest economic development and entrepreneurism there remains a disconnect between creating viable business ventures and providing quality paid apprentices our youth have identifies as a critical missing link for the next generation entrepreneurs.

We also relied too heavily on outside experts that did not follow through with their pledge to offer technical assistance. We need to build our expertise from within to ensure that we are able to initiate and maintain our efforts without outside expert intervention. Training will be a significant goal for our medicinal and traditional herb sales initiative and tourism. Training needs to have a heavy emphasis in order for youth to have a comfort level to have the confidence to practice the lessons learned even in a supported environment that has been created by NAAP, its mentors and partners.

Reflections on the community innovation process

The most Important element of our work was to increase the collective understanding through multi generational learning with youth and elders. This gave the youth the foundation and support needed to explore their highest dreams of success in ways that made sense to them and in ways that are consistent with their values and life ways. This allows for a back and forth of increasing understanding and generating ideas that resulted in the youth enterprises to be tested and implemented. These two elements of the CI process were returned to repeatedly. Now that the youth led enterprises are launched , some farther than others, we believe that in the future this process will be used to now create a creative youth development component to ensure ongoing success for native youth through and beyond their youth led enterprises. In truth , all of the components are necessary in creating viable solutions for our native you, NAAP had the opportunity through other funding sources to create a close connection with key stakeholders through our coalition and collaborations that leveraged existing resources to identify the needs and to be ready to act once there was the support to take the youth.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

NAAP would not have been able to lead youth and elders through the process without demonstrating an in-depth knowledge and understanding of our Lakota culture and how youth can live their culture in today’s times. Cultural Competence is vital and must not only be integrated into youth programs and services it must be demonstrated to the community that these competencies exist within the core programs offered. NAAP was able to demonstrate this by offering opportunities for youth and community to re-establish their cultural values and life ways in consistent and year around programs.

Progress toward an innovation

We have made tremendous progress in finding a sustainable way to engage youth in culturally based social enterprise that meets the need to additional resources while giving Native youth real world experience in how to take a vision and turn it into a reality that works. We have engaged youth in a way that excites and motivates them in ways that have created measurable commitment ( over 1500 volunteer hours) and gotten local community, tribal and regional interest and encouragement to take this new innovation further. Our breakthrough was the establishment of Native youth led businesses that give youth purpose, experience, skills and passion. This is an fair process open for native youth regardless of community or academic or social status that has proven to allow youth to feel success in ways that is not possible in other circles. Buy ‘graduating’ youth to higher positions of responsibility and opportunities it allows for and encourage new youth to continue to be welcomed in and step into shoes that have been left for them. This makes this initiative sustainable both by adding more youth but by infusing new resources into to programs that allow youth to benefit.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

We are now positioned to go back to work the process to operationalize this creative youth development model as the underlying system of support for youth led enterprises in our community. This requires going back to review the lessons learned and the generate strategies to address any gaps in support or areas that need additional activities to ensure youth success. This will need to include opportunities and strategies to address youth transitioning into adulthood in regards to education, work and healthy adult support systems.

What’s next?

Our next steps are to hold multigenerational gatherings to discuss any gaps in our youth develop process that can be filled by community, programs and activities and explore with youth their vision for a healthy transition into adulthood and creating a plan and leverage resources to ensure youth development and transition happen seamlessly for our native youth.

If you could do it all over again…

Pick one effort and see it to success before starting the next. Even though our initiatives all fit together we spread ourselves too thin trying to move all of them forward at once. This would have allowed us to utilize our volunteers and resources in a more strategic manner

One last thought

Please attach an income and expense statement for this grant period to date that includes a side-by-side comparison with your original grant budget. Feel free to include a narrative of your expenses and income, if helpful.