Youth get paid to start business
New program aims to develop young Nunavummiut into entrepreneurs
Northern News Services
Monday, February 8, 2016
NUNAVUT
A new entrepreneurship training program hopes to entice youth with the prospect of being paid to start their own business.
"It'll be a risk-free opportunity for these participants to start a business, because they'll actually be receiving a training allowance as well," said Ajmal Sataar, a member of a group called Enactus that created this project.
The Inspire Nunavut program will provide 20 participants, split evenly between Iqaluit and Pond Inlet, the opportunity to create new solutions in their communities through entrepreneurship.
Participants will look to their communities for inspiration for problem-solving businesses and receive both financial and mentorship support along the way to starting their own company.
Sataar first stopped in Nunavut in October 2014 during an assessment for the potential project.
"What we learned was traditional business wasn't very receptive to a lot of the youth, so that's when we started talking about social enterprise and the idea of solving problems through enterprise," he said.
The next year, his group ran a one-week workshop as a pilot, and now he's launched the much larger Inspire Nunavut program.
Participants will be aided in developing their idea into a sustainable business over a period of six to 12 months through mentorship and a variety of other tools. They will participate in a three-day in-person workshop with Inspire Nunavut's team of experts, weekly remote mentorship with industry experts, work placement with local entrepreneurs and support from an on-the-ground co-ordinator.
"What we're hoping to do is really inspire the youth and create some leaders in the community, to create solutions for the territory from the territory's youth themselves," said Sataar.
Inuit culture and traditional wisdom will be taken into account, he said.
He said Pond Inlet was chosen to launch the program, along with Iqaluit, because of its active youth community.
"Pond Inlet is more remote than Iqaluit, so we wanted to learn what it would be like to start the program over there and then take those best practices and expand it across the territory," said Sataar.
