Moncton Boys And Girls Club Launching Intercultural Entrepreneurship Program For Youth
MONCTON – The Boys and Girls Club of Moncton may have to close its physical location again as the city moves back to more stringent measures for Covid-19 mitigation. But that won’t stop it from launching a new program aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and intercultural cooperation skills for youth.
Ingenium: Inspiring Growth is a multi-year online entrepreneurial lab for teens aged 13 to 18 that’s grounded in intercultural cooperation, with a focus on community building.
“We’re going to be using Zoom to expose the kids to everything they need to know about entrepreneurship,” says executive director Moncef Lakouas.
Funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the program offers youth an opportunity to collaborate for a common purpose, to strengthen bonds between teenagers from various walks of life and cultural backgrounds, and to connect them with business leaders, government representatives, community partners and other stakeholders in the community.
Lakouas said it’s important to integrate an intercultural component to doing business within the program. That’s why the program will be made up of 80 percent newcomer teens and 20 percent locals. Lakouas said the kids will also have conversations about understanding inclusion, diversity, race, and business on the “human” level.
“We have to understand each other from a dialogue perspective,” he said. “So instead of having a project that’s run for immigrants only, we wanted to have a dialogue. We wanted to have a mix. We wanted to have teams exchange…to interact in the most meaningful ways, build businesses together.”
The program will include multiple six-month cohorts, with two cohorts of 12 members each being recruited this week. The program is open to youth across Greater Moncton, and not just those who go to the club.
Participants will work together in teams of three, and learn to develop their ideas into startups. They’ll learn how to develop a business plan, the key elements in startup businesses, the importance of marketing and customer relations, and so on.
They’ll also get to create their own podcasts to use as a means of communication. They’ll create an episode a month to update listeners on what’s happening at the club, and what they’re up to.
Participants will meet mentors, some prominent business owners in the region, as well as visit businesses if Covid-19 restrictions allow. At the end of their term, they’ll also be able to present their ideas in a pitch competition. Lakouas said the club is looking for ways to financially sponsor the business ideas that could come out of the program.
With after school programs closed, the club is taking its programming online and will re-assess in the next two weeks. But Ingenium won’t see much of an effect, Lakouas said.
He said this could be a start for the club to dabble in entrepreneurship programs.
“Maybe [the teens will] become the business owners that we all want to see them become,” he said.
With the club’s members coming from various socio-economic backgrounds, Lakouas said the club had provided laptops and is looking to provide tablets to kids who need them. This is part of an ongoing assessment of needs, he added, but a similar assessment will also be applied to kids who apply to Ingenium.