Rachel is a great example of.... Going back to Helen's and Kim's testimonies on this, I believe she has 12 children. She took and adopted some of her sister's family after her sister passed away and dealt with a whole bunch of family issues that came along with that. Then she started a company. She started a bannock company. It's just a testament to her resilience and her persistence that she was able to do that.
What we did for her was put her into our accelerator program without charging her for it, so that she could get the type of education and support she needs at this stage of her business. She wasn't prepared yet to scale it, but we were able to help her get connections with Sobeys as a retail grocery location, and we were able to give her the support she needs in terms of mentoring, coaching and programming to help her become a better entrepreneur.
We have seen many indigenous entrepreneurs on the show over the years. An increasing number of very strong entrepreneurs are coming out of the indigenous communities.
I personally want to support and help women across all areas, whether they're indigenous or from any of the other communities that exist in our country. I want to be able to help them. They need the focus. They need to have the type of support and programming.... They need to have the understanding, because they are living in different circumstances. They are dealing with different challenges, and we need to acknowledge that.
Simply, all women are not dealing with the same problems simply because we're women. We are dealing with different issues because of where we live, the challenges we've been brought up with and the communities that we reside in.