Page 14 - 2024 Feb report

AIBL MEETING REPORT
FEBRUARY 6, 2024
AIBL: Prairie Bighorn Blount, Executive Director
JSF: Malcolm Macleod, Bobby Krause, Tommy Pence, Sharon Wood
Prairie was in South Florida to meet with leaders of the Seminole Tribe about the Tribe’s business enterprises and how they might be able to become an AIBL corporate partner. This is part of AIBL’s strategic plan to expand both their donor base and their outreach to corporations to offer leadership and
development training specifically for Native Americans.
She contacted JSF and asked if she could stop by the office to give us an update on AIBL’s work. JSF and AIBL just concluded a three-year sustainability and capacity building grant with JSF providing support of $100,000/year. Under the terms of the grant, AIBL’s goals were:
1. to establish and maintain strategic alliances with Native American student organizations,
2. increase the number of AIBL chapters,
3. increase the number of private donors,
4. increase corporate sponsors, and
5. increase internship/career opportunities for AIBL students.
Prairie spoke to all of the goals in her brief visit:
1. AIBL has established strong working relationships with several Native organizations. Of special note is that AIBL is partnering with NCAIED, the non-profit that is hosting the National RES Conference. AIBL’s national leadership conference will be hosted in conjunction with the 2024 RES Conference in Las Vegas in March.
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She noted that they have had to reduce the number of students participating in the Business Competitions because of time constraints. The plan going forward is to have regional business competitions with the regional winners going to the annual conference for a “final”.
Prairie spoke at length about the chapters. There are now 47 chapters. Their concern, however, is the dramatic decrease in high school chapters following the pandemic. She cited the closing of schools and the trauma of seeing such a large number of family and friends die from COVID. AIBL is really focusing on reaching out to high school juniors and seniors as they see the reservation high schools as easy funnels to the local TCUs. They are conducting a weeklong summer camp on the campus of UNLV. The hope is that introducing students to what a campus can be like will help motivate more to think of going to college somewhere.
They are working on expanding to having chapters in all TCUs. They are in about half of them right now. Malcolm asked which are the strongest and Prairie listed United Tribes Technical College, Navajo Tech, University of Montana, and Northwest Indian College.
AIBL is working to strengthen the mentorship programs in the TCUs. This year about 150 students were matched with mentors. This was forced by the pandemic to be primarily virtual meetings, but that has proved to be helpful in assuring mentor/mentee meetings at least once a month. Most meet more often, and more in person meetings are now taking place. AIBL sends out calls for mentors over social media, then does background checks before pairing mentors with students.
Page 12 February Report