Secondary school students from across the North are getting an early introduction to business through Enterprise Olympics, an initiative of Head Start in Business.
The initiative began its life in 2004 as the FedNor Business Challenge, modelled after an Enterprise Olympics program from Newfoundland and eventually evolving into the Enterprise Olympics of today.
Every spring, secondary school students from across the North gather for two days to develop a business plan and talk commerce with coaches and mentors from the community.
Bonnie Martineau, the communications coordinator for the South Temiskaming Community Futures Development Corporation, said the goal is to get students thinking about business and entrepreneurship early in their lives, with the ultimate goal of reducing youth outmigration from the North.
“They might not be interested in entrepreneurship, but when they leave the event, they think it’s possible,” Martineau said.
“They have those tools and they can just venture out and start a business. So we get them thinking about entrepreneurship through this event.”
The northeast edition travels between communities year to year, while the northwest edition takes place in Thunder Bay.
In 2016, a total of 242 students and 48 teachers participated in the program.
When they register, students choose to participate in one of six sectors: retail; technology and innovation; arts and culture; social enterprise; health and wellness; and forestry, mining, and agriculture.
Students are then divided into teams based on their choices. Mentors and coaches from the six sectors then guide the teams through the process of coming up with a business plan and preparing an elevator pitch for a panel of judges.
Martineau said the business community has been generous in providing their time to the program.
“From inception, the business plan challenge created partnerships with the business community, which allowed us to form strategic alliances with partners, entrepreneurs and community organizations,” Martineau said.
“In the northeast, it moves from year to year, so we do create those lasting partnerships with different business communities, which is awesome."
Semi-finalists are chosen by sector, and then those teams go before a panel of judges to determine the overall winning team.
The winning team from each sector receives $500, while members from the overall winning team each get $1,000 in scholarship money from a participating post-secondary school in Northern Ontario.
In 2016, the winning business plans both came from the social enterprise category.
In the northeast, the winning team came up with the Buddy Bracelet, a bracelet the wearer can use to alert authorities if they are in danger; in the northwest, the winning idea was Community Baskets, a grocery store catering to low-income consumers.
Martineau said there’s been a definite rise in interest in social enterprises — organizations that use business practices to help effect positive change for human, cultural or environmental purposes — but innovation and technology remain the most popular sector for students.
“The technology and innovation sector is always the biggest; it always has the most ideas,” Martineau said.
“We have a lot of app business ideas, and that's what students love and are good at; they're natural with it, so it's pretty interesting to see.”
Other interesting ideas that stood out in the 2016 challenge include Big Stud Clothing, a clothing line for larger men;
AHelp, an app to help people living with anxiety; Heritage Hall, a museum app that introduces users to various cultures by showing them new food, clothing, or language; and Theatric Café, a café that also hosts live theatre productions.
Statistics from a 2015 survey of participants in all the Head Start in Business programs revealed that students who were not in school were more likely to become self-employed than those who were not.
Eighty per cent of respondents have since taken at least one business course, with an average of 3.0, while 36 per cent in the control group did.
Head Start in Business participants are also more likely to be thinking about starting a business and are significantly more interested in doing so in Northern Ontario, Martineau said.
“We hope that we inspire them and we hope that we can help them get to where they want to be as an entrepreneur,” she said.
In the northeast, this year’s Enterprise Olympics will take place May 17 and 18 at Canadore College and Nipissing University in North Bay.
In the northwest, the event will take place May 3 and 4 at Confederation College and Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.
Head Start in Business is a pan-Northern community futures development corporation project that encourages youth to explore and expand their entrepreneurial potential while remaining in Northern Ontario. It’s funded by FedNor, the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund.
