Ottawa group teaches business skills to Iqaluit youth

A group of Iqaluit youth are learning how to come up with business ideas and develop the perfect pitch, as part of a three-day entrepreneurship boot camp put on by students from the University of Ottawa.

Enactus is an international NGO that aims to help solve social issues using entrepreneurship. Four students from the University of Ottawa's Enactus branch are spending a week in Iqaluit developing projects in the community.

"They've been a great help with just helping me get my ideas down on paper and helping me get my ideas through into a business," says 13-year-old Liam Robertson, who hopes to start a tutoring business.

The local teens participating in the workshop have all kinds of ideas — meant to deal with some of Nunavut's most serious social issues, including literacy, low graduation rates, mental health and food insecurity.

Sadie Pinksen and Hope Carpenter want to share or sell books at the local high school. They say there aren't enough places to find novels in Iqaluit, especially the current titles they say get youth excited about reading. 

"It's important because lots of people, especially youth up in the Arctic, in Nunavut, there's a very poor literacy rate and our goal is to improve that and share the love of reading among youth our age," says Carpenter. 

"They're all addressing problems that have to do with that," says Kathleen Kemp, who leads the University of Ottawa's Enactus program. "It's really bringing those entrepreneurship skills to the young people here so they can realize their passion and do something meaningful in their community." 

This is the first time Kemp and her colleagues are working on programs outside of Ottawa and she says the young people she's met are excited to take advantage of opportunities that exist especially for Northerners. 

That includes funding and projects created by Southerners like Kemp.  

While the entrepreneurial workshop ends Wednesday, the Enactus group says it won't be one of the many outside organizations that come to Nunavut only to leave before programs really get off the ground.  

"We're not going anywhere. We're really dedicated to working with this community," says Kemp. "We love it up here. We're really excited to come back and we haven't even left here."