Building Equity, One Program at a Time
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Mona-Lisa Prosper is the Director, Black Entrepreneurs at Futurpreneur.
BY MONA-LISA PROSPER
o be truly inclusive, you must be intentional about it. Diversity is a fact, but inclusion is a choice! Marginalized communities are said to be those excluded from mainstream social, economic, educational, and/ or cultural life and that exclusion has been entrenched in our society for quite some time. I am a Black woman, proud daughter of Haitian immigrant parents, born and raised in Montréal and because I was taught to love and celebrate my roots, I always made it a point to stay active in uplifting my community. Evolving in what I qualify as being an “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Bubble”, I often forget that an entire world exists outside of that bubble, and in that world, the case study for inclusion still needs to be made. In that world, many are still adamant about the fact that specific programming for BIPOC communities is reverse racism, many still qualify themselves as being “colour-blind” and think that in 2022, “things have changed”. Interestingly enough, these same individuals would struggle, if not fail, to come up with a list of just five BIPOC entrepreneurs or professionals and they would likely blame it on the false and frustrating assumption that opportunities are equally accessible to all but are just not seized by BIPOC individuals. As Peter Drucker said, “What gets measured gets managed”, and the past year has served us with statistics that can no longer allow for disparities to be ignored. We finally have data about Black entrepreneurship in Canada. Seeing these numbers was 18
FOUNDATION Magazine
March/April 2022
somewhat validating and made me feel heard! A study by the African Canadian Senate Group & Senator Colin Deacon found that 76 percent of Black entrepreneurs surveyed said their race makes it harder to succeed as an entrepreneur. Similarly, another study by the Black Business and Professional Association in Canada found that 78.5 percent of Black women entrepreneurs agreed or strongly agreed that access to financing was an issue, and a staggering number of 81.4 percent used only personal financing to launch their business. We finally have proof about what I, and many others before me, have been screaming at the top of our lungs for years. Like most people in the Black communities, I was not surprised by any of it, and as the director of Futurpreneur’s Black Entrepreneur Startup Program, I felt like I was handed a very powerful tool to help continue building awareness for the program. Futurpreneur has always helped a very diverse set of young entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. Back in 2015, way before joining the organization, I remember being impressed that a Black woman operating a natural hair salon had been funded by them. The natural hair movement in Black communities is a very important and powerful movement about breaking down the internalized desire to conform to the conventional western beauty standards, reclaiming our identity and embracing our natural afro-textured hair. At that time, not many people outside of our communities were familiar with the movement nor understood its depth. foundationmag.ca
COURTESY FUTURPRENEUR
DIVERSITY
