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Royal Roads grads assist Mongolian small business

Five Royal Roads University graduates are heading to Mongolia to lend their expertise to small business in the south Gobi region.

Five Royal Roads University graduates are heading to Mongolia to lend their expertise to small business in the south Gobi region.

The consulting project in Mongolia is the first under an agreement between the school and Oyu Tolgoi LLC, a company developing a mine on one of the world’s largest copper-gold resources.

The five graduates — Laura Dohan and Sarah Campbell of Victoria, Christian Mundhenk of Kamloops, Lyndsay Cliche of Calgary and Matt Antwright of Edmonton — left last week for a month.

The team will be working with three local businesses to assist with their supply-chain management and business development requirements in order to become suppliers to the mining company.

Through the project, the team will help develop business plans and assessments of the local markets so the companies are not entirely dependent on Oyu Tolgoi for continued operations.

“Coaching small businesses is a terrific application of the business planning skills honed in our bachelor of commerce program which is focused specifically on entrepreneurial management,” said Geoff Archer, RRU faculty member and director of the Eric C. Douglass Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies.

The project is also being conducted in a region that could have an impact on the B.C. economy down the road. Natural Resources Canada estimates that Canadian companies have about $400 million in assets in Mongolia.