Annemie Bernardo was always part mermaid.
“I just loved swimming since I was really little,” she said.
Growing up in South Africa, she swam every chance she could whether it was at the Olympic-sized pool at her hometown’s hospital or at her school.
“That was my sport,” she said.
After graduating, Bernado was unsure of what she wanted to do with her life. When she and her husband were looking to buy a property, she saw something that would change everything.
“I saw a woman with an indoor pool inside her house – like in the middle of her house,” she said.
“I said to him, ‘that’s what I want to do. I want to be a swimming teacher.’”
After becoming certified, she officially opened up her first private pool in 2006 and opened three more before they immigrated to Canada four years ago.
After some initial startup frustrations to bring her business to fruition, with the help of Community Futures, the owner of Simply Swimming is about to celebrate two years in Unity.
Now, with the recent establishment of the Women’s Initiative Fund, Bernardo said she is hoping other women wishing to start a business will have an easier time than she did.
“I think that if banks can just see that it’s not always just men that’s in the corporate world,” she said.
“The last 10, 15 years, women have also been really active and creative.”
Annemie Bernardo stands poolside in Unity. (Julia Lovett-Squires/battlefordsNOW Staff)Lisa Cimmer, general manager with the Northwest office, said the new fund is geared specifically towards women.
“We just really wanted to put a focus on our female communities,” she said.
“It’s been known across all the boards that females typically don’t get enough focused attention to grow their businesses.”
She explained roughly 60 per cent of the applicants or clients that come to Community Futures offices are men.
“Don’t get me wrong, there’s a great number of female entrepreneurs out there and a lot of them are strong, they’re very empowered female entrepreneurs,” Cimmer said.
“Sometimes there just isn’t encouragement to come forward.”
The fund, which officially launched last week, will give women entrepreneurs loans of up to $45,000 and is strictly for applicants living in the Northwest region.
“It’s a five-year term so, that makes the payments a lot more palatable for these businesses,” Cimmer said. “We’re also doing six-month, interest only payments.”
Bernardo found that break gave her a leg up when she was first opening.
“In fact, she didn’t charge me until I was ready to open up my business’s doors,” Bernardo said, noting that leeway proved to be “tremendous.”
To be eligible, the applicant must identify as a woman, and the businesses can be a partnership, sole proprietorship or a corporation and may run seasonal, or full or part time. Among the uses that the loan may go towards include initial startup costs, operating expenses, renovations and improvements.
“We don’t do the things for them; we simply give them the tools and the education so that they can tackle those things on their own,” Cimmer said.
Since Bernardo opened, her swim and aquasize classes have been full and her students are all ages and come from all backgrounds.
“My classes are very small,” she said. “If you want progress and you want children safe, you can’t try and do mass production.”
Now that Bernardo is about to reach her two-year milestone in November, she hopes other women who wish to start their own business will access the new fund.
“I think that it’s fantastic that there’s somebody that wants to reach out just for women,” she said.
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