Western Australia’s Kimberley region is home to powerful entrepreneurial women, many of whom are building businesses while leading in their communities, families and cultural groups. Yet, when it comes to accessing funding, most capital systems are still not designed with First Nations women in mind.
Mainstream business services are often city-based, hard to reach from remote communities, and rarely culturally safe. Application processes can be confusing, time-consuming, and misaligned with how women in the Kimberley live, work and lead.
Recognising this, Maganda Makers, a First Nations women’s business and leadership club in the Kimberley, set out to design something different: a community-led, culturally grounded approach to capital, shaped by and for First Nations women themselves.
Backed by Meshpoints funding, supported by Spacecubed and Lotterywest, the Maganda Makers ‘Right Capital’ Workshop brought together 35 First Nations women at Home Valley Station on Balanggarra Country to rethink what “good capital” looks like for their businesses and communities.
Designing “right fit” capital on Country
The Right Capital workshop was held at Home Valley Station in the East Kimberley, a First Nations-owned station run by Balanggarra Ventures. Over several days, 35 Maganda Makers members travelled from across the region to meet on Country, many of them the first entrepreneurs in their family or cultural group.
“The women have been trialling what we call the Sugarbag,” explained Clare Wood, Director of Enterprise Partnerships WA (EPWA). “In each regional town in the Kimberley, they have a yarning group each month, and those women then have control over the Sugarbag, which helps people have access to really small start-up capital.” EPWA have been the implementation partner for Maganda Makers with support from Good Return and the Menzies Leadership foundation.
These micro-grants, often up to around $500, can support early business needs like marketing, materials, travel or product development. Crucially, it’s a fund that’s managed for First Nations women by First Nations women.
Clare shared, “Over time, as women’s businesses get more investment ready, the idea is that it grows into an investment fund they can distribute.”
The Right Capital workshop focused on clarifying how this Sugarbag model would operate, how trials would roll out across communities, and what roles local women would play in stewarding the fund.
Naming the problem: when systems don’t fit
Much of the workshop was dedicated to unpacking the barriers women had faced when trying to access mainstream support.
“Mainstream business services aren’t set up for people living rurally or remote,” Clare shared. “Then there’s another layer of challenge around application processes or things that are generally exclusive and excluding of First Nations women.”
At a follow-on ecosystem event in Broome, Maganda Makers members shared case studies of these journeys, stories of being turned away, not feeling culturally safe, or finding systems that simply didn’t reflect their realities.
“We heard why the Sugarbag is coming into existence,” Clare said. “The journeys of exclusion people have experienced or lack of access or lack of right fit. Often people don’t feel culturally safe in places like mainstream business development services”
By surfacing these stories collectively, the women were not only designing a new capital model, but also building a stronger shared voice to advocate for change across the broader WA ecosystem.
Sugarbag in action: growing confidence and collective strength
Since the Right Capital workshop, the Sugarbag trial has continued to roll out across Kimberley communities, with local yarning circles managing their own funds and supporting women at different stages of the entrepreneurial journey.
“There’s 140 members in the club now,” Clare expressed. “People are at all different stages of the entrepreneurial journey, but as a collective they’re really saying: we need things to be the right fit for us. And part of that is the right capital.”
The workshop also helped catalyse stronger relationships between Maganda Makers and the wider innovation ecosystem. Organisations like Impact Seed and WASEC travelled to Broome to listen, learn and explore how their programs could better support First Nations women founders.
A living example: Black Tappers and visible leadership
One standout story Clare highlighted is Temali Howard, owner of Blak Tapas in Kununurra, a café and retail space that doubles as a culturally safe employment hub for young Aboriginal women.
“Temali has made it a really culturally safe place to work,” Clare shared. “She’s got a lot of young women working there who, again, who maybe excluded from the employment market in other places.”
Blak Tapas regularly hosts Maganda Makers yarning circles and is emerging as a physical hub for women to access business support, connection and visibility.
“Temali would say, ‘This is what Black excellence can look like,’” Clare said. “She has a hope to make that a hub where women could go to access the business support they need from each other, and in terms of having a centralised place.”
Since the Right Capital workshop, Temali has also joined programs like Impact Seed’s Impact2 Innovate to become more investment ready, leading the way for others to follow.
Momentum at Lombadina and beyond
The work didn’t stop at Home Valley. In August 2025, Maganda Makers hosted a larger gathering at Lombadina on Bardi Country, bringing newer members into the fold. Over three days, more than 60 women took part in business workshops, cultural activities and a peer-voted pitch event, where five members presented their ideas and three received awards from a sponsoring organisation.
As Maganda Makers then recently became is own entity; Maganda Makers Ltd and continues to expand the Sugarbag and other initiatives, the ambition is clear: to create a future where First Nations women across the Kimberley can access the right capital and support, shape their own pathways, and see their enterprises recognised as a driving force in the region’s economic and social future.
Meshpoints, backed by Lotterywest and Spacecubed, is proud to support projects that centre community leadership, cultural strength and long-term impact, from Maganda Makers in the Kimberley to innovation festivals, student incubators and sector-wide collaborations across WA.
Interested in accessing funding to support your project or initiative that strengthens WA’s innovation ecosystem? Meshpoints is entering its next phase, with renewed funding to support ecosystem-building initiatives across the state. Click here to join us at Morning Startup on 4 February to hear what’s coming next and how to get involved!