THUNDER BAY — It was 1995 when Rosalind Lockyer discovered the clever idea of linking business-minded women together to form a peer lending circle, and PARO, Centre For Women’s Enterprise was born.
Thirty years later, the centre co-ordinates more than 276 peer lending circles that support each other across Ontario with more developing across Canada.
Lockyer explained what a peer lending circle is.
“A group of four to seven women come together to provide each other with support, inspiration and help,” she said. “Some of the circles that we have are 30 years old.”
She said PARO teaches the women upon start-up of their circle, where they can apply for and approve grants and loans within their circle group.
They also have an emergency fund that they develop within their circle to help their members if they run into hard times.
“That is the nature of business. Everything’s not rosy all the time,” she said. Having ongoing access to funding is vital, but then also is having access to people to talk about business problems.
“These women who have pledged to work together for the long term not only help sustain their businesses in that circle but also help the community.”
PARO helps women obtain good jobs in addition to supporting their businesses.
“Many of the women that we work with have jobs. They’re working online in their jobs remotely, or they’re going to the office a couple of days a week. They also have the option of operating their business, because they’re probably not working full-time,” she said.
“They also have to serve their customers and in many small communities there are not a lot of available offices to provide that flexibility.”
Lockyer pointed out that circle members are also instrumental in driving the entire PARO organization. Each year, new members are elected to PARO’s board of directors.
“The women we serve are the women who are the decision-makers in our organization,” she said.
“They are involved not only in supporting each other in those circles, but they’re also involved in the central organization and that ‘community of women’ has made PARO sustainable and successful for all of these 30 years.”
The organization also has many business and community partners that help with funding. Among these partners are more than 40 federally-funded Community Futures Development Corporations (CFDC) across the province.
The CFDCs are funded through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario (FedNor), and the Federal Economic Development Agency for southern Ontario, (FeDev). PARO also works with 43 business growth advisors.
“Thunder Bay Ventures was our first CFDC that we worked with and they’re still supporting us,” Lockyer said.
“We also have a lot of community partners, such as the Alterna Savings Credit Union. They are loan investors for our circles because CFDCs don’t exist in larger cities.”
Locker said PARO is at “an interesting stage” with members at every phase of development.
She called business development a “transition line” where a new company startup may be in crisis at times but with steady growth they build resilience.
“We work with them through all the stages. We call it building a sustainable livelihood,” she said.
“Then they get into the early growth, the late growth, and then into scaling their business so that they’re now distributing their services and programs beyond the borders of where they live into different countries.”
“We’ve been doing trade missions twice a year into the United States since 2019,” she said.
Canada’s Trade Commission has invited PARO members to travel to Australia next month to explore options for businesswomen from Canada to expand their businesses there.
The Chronicle Journal / Local Journalism Initiative
