Prairie Bighorn-Blount Archives - Johnson Scholarship Foundation

Johnson Scholarship Foundation, a supporter of the American Indigenous Business Leaders, is glad to share AIBL’s efforts to support the communities of Indigenous Peoples during this uncertain time.

Donations for Food, Cleaning Products for Seniors Accepted Now at AIBL.org

PHOENIX – Tribal communities have long looked to their elders to pass along wisdom, customs and traditions, and now, future business leaders from across the nation are banding together in support of their senior members.

American Indigenous Business Leaders (AIBL), a national nonprofit with more than 500 active chapters spanning 20 states, has a lengthy history of empowering and supporting Indigenous business students from across the United States. In the wake of recent events, the organization is temporarily shifting its focus from supporting students to supporting seniors, many of whom are suddenly facing exacerbated health issues, a lack of transportation to and from stores, medical services, and similar hardships.

To do so, AIBL has launched a campaign to create Senior Citizen Support Care Packages and is looking to raise $150,000 to put toward the effort. AIBL chapters from across the nation will then use the funds raised to create care packages valued at either $100 or $50 apiece, with $100 packages containing food and cleaning essentials (think paper products, baby wipes and other tough-to-find items), and $50 packages containing food, exclusively.

“In tribal communities, younger members have always looked to their elders as sources of respect and leadership – they have an endless amount of admiration for those who came before them and feel a responsibility to care for them,” said AIBL’s Board Chairman Dave Archambault Sr. “The AIBL community is one that recognizes the evolving needs of senior citizens and is ready to step up and help support those who have long done the same for their families and communities. We are asking people to help, knowing that good things will come to them for their generosity.”

Once care packages are ready for distribution, AIBL members will deliver them directly to the recipients’ doorsteps to help reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

“Some of these recipients simply don’t have a way to get around, or have health issues at play that make it more difficult for them to visit public places like grocery stores,” said AIBL Executive Director Prairie Bighorn-Blount. “Others don’t have any local family members who can help. We’re here to step in and help ensure that no one goes without essential items during this time of crisis.”

AIBL is currently accepting donations of any size to help further the effort and reach even more senior citizens across Arizona and the nation. To donate to the cause or learn more about the organization, visit AIBL.org.

There’s an adage about having a direction that says, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

A couple years ago, the American Indian Business Leaders, with the assistance of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation, spent some time examining where we wanted to go – and how to get there.

The American Indian Business Leaders was founded in 1994 with the mission of empowering Indigenous business students in the United States to foster economic improvement in Native American communities. We’ve grown from one chapter at the University of Montana at Missoula to 120 chapters at universities, tribal colleges, and high schools with more than 250 tribal nations represented. With 2019 marking our 25^th anniversary, it was an appropriate time to evaluate where the next 25 years would take us.

Young man wearing Indigenous Entrepreneur shirt

Through about a year of analysis and planning with input from respected leaders throughout Indian Country, AIBL learned what programs were most successful, and also, which ones needed improvement. Specifically, we realized that we could only guess at how to prepare our students to participate in corporate America because we didn’t know what attributes corporate America needed.

We’re excited that in the future, AIBL will get those answers straight from the executives themselves. AIBL is building a new advisory board with representatives from many of America’s best known corporations. We expect to hold the first meeting in the first quarter of 2020.

We anticipate having 8-10 members on the advisory board, and I’m happy to share that it will include Sam McCracken, general manager for Nike N7, Nike’s product line that supports the N7 Fund to provide sport and physical activity programming to kids in Native American and Aboriginal communities. Longtime AIBL supporter Trina Finley Ponce, the diversity and inclusion program manager at HP, also has agreed to join the board along with Micah Highwalking, senior operations manager at Dr. Pepper.

In addition to advising us on corporate culture, the advisory board will help us cultivate relationships with corporate America that can benefit our students in numerous ways. We’ll be using them as a sounding board to learn what kinds of skills we should be helping our students develop. That feedback is important as we prepare our students to work in corporate America. We also know it’s important to hear from people in a diverse range of businesses as each business and industry has its own corporate culture.

We also anticipate that the advisory board will act as a bridge to greater diversity for corporations wanting to be inclusive of Native Americans and our culture.

We at AIBL are proud of our first 25 years supporting Indigenous business students. We look forward to a future with even greater opportunities.

Prairie Bighorn Blount is the executive director of American Indian Business Leaders (AIBL). She grew up on the Northern Cheyenne reservation in eastern Montana and is an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Sioux Tribe. Before joining the AIBL organization, she worked in Washington, D.C., providing contract management services to help support economic development within American Indian communities.

American Indigenous Business Leaders Look to Raise $150,000 to Create Care Packages for Elders in the Community

American Indian Business Leaders Blaze a Trail to the Future with New Advisory Board