On Sept. 26, the Queen’s Commerce Corporate Competition (Q3C) held a case competition in partnership with Tipi Moza. 

Tipi Moza is an organization that works towards affordable housing for First Nation, Metis, and Inuit families in the Kingston area. 

“In case competitions, students are paired off into teams and they get the opportunity to work through unique cases that are designed with actual businesses,” Angelina Haniff, Comm ’23 and Q3C internal events executive, said in an interview with The Journal.  

During the Sept. 26 competition, professional consultants and a Tipi Moza executive made up the panel of judges. 

“We had about four teams competing, and two consultant [representatives] from Kearney Consulting, as well as one representative from Tipi Moza. We tried to keep the turnout small, because it was our first internal mini case competition,” Haniff said. 

According to Haniff, Q3C would like to hold more internal events and have a greater emphasis on EDII (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigenization) for the 2021-22 year.  

“We wanted to make it a goal to have more internal events throughout the year. We also wanted to integrate more EDII aspects within our organization. We wanted to pay respect and support Indigenous communities,” Haniff explained. 

“We really resonated with Tipi Moza’s mission because it’s a Kingston-based business, it’s Indigenous, and they really have a social impact-driven mission. Their mission is to find affordable housing for Indigenous individuals who are in receipt of Ontario Disabilities or Ontario Works.”

The main issues students helped Tipi Moza with focused on the topic of affordable housing availability in Kingston. 

“We asked [Tipi Moza] to send us information about a business problem they were facing, and their main issue is that there’s a lack of affordable housing in Kingston,” Haniff said. 

“We provided students with three alternatives to assess: have Tipi Moza partner with a private developer, partner with a local landlord, and the third alternative was to partner with the City of Kingston.”

Haniff added that the ideas generated by students would help Tipi Moza in the real world. 

“We really hope that we made an impact on [Tipi Moza’s] operations and we gave them ideas. One of the judges who is on the Tipi Moza Board of Directors said she would use some ideas from the case competition, and that she would present them to the Board of Directors.” 

“As business students we will have to face challenges related to EDII. It’s important to educate business students, who were the majority of participants, on Indigenous ways of doing business,” she said. 

Haniff hopes this case competition event can set a precedent for other Commerce Society clubs to flow.

“Hopefully we set a precedent that other conference clubs can have these small competitions that are more EDII related.”