Shylo Elmayan of Niibin Advisory Services
We caught up virtually with Shylo Elmayan, founder of Niibin Advisory Services, a capacity-building consultancy that works mainly with Indigenous community organizations:
Our organization is here to help Indigenous community organizations focus on big priorities and work through that pile on the side of the desk. We support strategic and operational projects. Program evaluation, policy development, and community engagement are the primary things that we help with.
We just got back from a community yesterday. This particular committeewas so grounded in their teachings and practices. Community leadership wanted a new Terms of Reference, so we worked on translating the committee’svalues into a document. So, it was to satisfy a requirement, but also to open up good conversations about how they like to maintain transparency and accountability.
I’m lucky to be able to work with a lot of community organizations. For a short period of time, I get to learn about something else - like work we did with the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres. In doing that, I learned a lot more about what they do, how a provincial organization looks. I get to learn more about what’s going on across this part of Turtle Island.
Policies can seem boring, opaque, and not useful. But it’s fun to have conversations with clients to find opportunities to make a policy that doesn’t look like anything else - to be curious about expressing policies or priorities from an Indigenous worldview.. It’s fun to encourage clients to step out of western ways of doing business.. You don’t want quorum? You can say, “quorum is the people who show up.” I’m not recommending things, but pulling out what’s important to clients.
What inspired me while I was getting going was finding inspiring stories. There’s a podcast, Side Hustle Pro, and it was really great to hear the stories of how these women got their business going.
I’m excited to collaborate with clients on real things that are impacting community members. When I think about the future, there’s a lot of leaders to look up to, who have been fervent in ensuring our rights and sovereignty are honoured. There are more and more young people who are getting higher levels of education, more information and exposure to things, and I think they’ll be an even stronger political force. That’s exciting.
