The Wawokiye Business Institute is a project designed to provide a customer-centered, hands-on business coaching system uniquely tailored to the needs and circumstances of our small business clients on the reservation.

The Wawokiye Business Institute is a systematic program of intensive coaching and small business faciliation which:

• Is based upon the Lakota concept of wawokiye or helping and generosity without expecting rewards or payment.
• Embraces the Lakota tradition of Tiyospaye (ti-oh-spay:  mentoring, serving, and cultivating positive values in an extended family environment).
• Provides long-term technical assistance to The Lakota Fund clients, existing reservation businesses, and aspiring Lakota entrepreneurs on and off the reservation.
• Is customer-centered and responsive to real time, individual business needs rather than the program needs of our funding organizations.
• Is built upon our commitment to create and expand small businesses grown from within our community, based on their aspirations and on accessing and locating viable external markets.
• Develops an extended professional network of service providers to fill any missing gaps of business and management expertise for clients on an as needed basis.
• Provides a kind of switchboard to route a multitude of resources needed by individual entrepreneurs.
• Provides intensive wawokiye on site at the client business and at business training clinics.
• Builds capacity within our Lakota Nation to effectively develop our economic and social conditions in a culturally sensitive manner.
• Provides on-going, practical business education at hands-on training clinics.

For more information on Wawokiye Business Institute, please call 605-455-2500.