At Cadence Charity Services, we help people do good, and we love to celebrate our clients for the mighty impact they’re having in the world. This month, we’re featuring YELL Canada, who are empowering youth to take on the future through entrepreneurship.
Amit Sandhu and his colleagues couldn’t get the statistic out of their heads. They had come across a BC Ministry of Education report that showed less than a quarter of graduating high school students felt prepared for a career. Less than a third felt prepared for post-secondary education. It was 2012 — how could this still be true?
Entrepreneurs themselves, they knew how powerful developing the entrepreneurial mindset could be for young people. It offered skills that could be applied in any work setting, not just the world of starting new businesses.
But Amit also knew that advocating for more entrepreneurship courses via the school system would be an uphill battle. Teachers and administrators were already dealing with budget constraints. The entrepreneurial solution? Work with passionate teachers themselves and support them with the best available resources and network.
From there, Amit and his co-founders developed YELL Canada. Today, they offer the first entrepreneurship course for high schoolers in the country that’s eligible for university credit. They are currently working on expanding nationally, bringing their unique curriculum and networking prowess to students across Canada — and working on developing an innovative non-profit model while they’re at it.
Why is developing entrepreneurship in youth so important?
Amit: Entrepreneurship provides a skill set and mindset that allows you to not only find a purposeful path, but to become creative problem solvers, in any career.
We started out trying to create a course that would prepare students for their careers and post secondary education. But at the same time, it has become a massive community engagement project. For example, this year we had 302 students complete the program, and we had a total of 300 volunteers supporting the student population.
Why are these types of partnerships so vital for young people and the community itself?
Amit: Communities can play a very instrumental role in lifting the existing public education system that we have. I come from an immigrant household, so I personally know how important a support network is, knowing that you can go to people for help.
For young people, especially as we go more digital, those real life connections are increasingly important. They help young people navigate their career. Through YELL, students meet at least 10 to 15 guest speakers and mentors, and not just from the business world. They’re exposed to a diversity of people, of backgrounds, stories, and industries. Having that network and giving young people skills to network provides an important jumping off point.
How did things change for YELL when the pandemic hit?
Amit: Multiple studies have shown that graduating into a recession has a negative long-term effect on careers. And with the pandemic, it’s adversely affected entry-level economic prospects for young people, in industries like hospitality and retail.
Students were already showing anxiety, and now they’re dealing with a pandemic, huge unemployment, and isolation. There’s no more job shadowing or “take your child to work” day. It’s just another barrier that’s come up in front of youth and their ability to learn about the world of work.
YELL has a place in all this. We provide a way for students to keep hearing from people in their community, and then teach them cutting-edge entrepreneurship, vetted by universities, to give them a better start.
Where do you see your place in the nonprofit world?
Amit: We’re amateurs in the charity game, and we learned very quickly that it was harder to start a charity to impact the community than we thought. We’ve found we constantly have to reimagine what our charity looks like. We went from an employee-based model with broad fundraising goals to a model where the entire team is composed of passionate independent contractors now.
Our team is bigger than it’s ever been, and we have more expertise in house than ever, but we’re also more flexible than we’ve ever been. We’ve been able to expand and retract based on funding. We’ve been able to weather the storm of COVID because of that flexibility. In many ways, the pandemic has set us up for growth.
We started out fundraising the traditional way, focused on grants, but in the current model, we work only with 5 or 6 major donors. We’re also trying to come up with new revenue models — like working with private schools, offering online paid courses, and more. These alternative streams of income will support the core public-school programs which we provide to districts and teachers for free. We are always trying to innovate to achieve sustainability.
Any great stories from your students lately?
Amit: One of our alumni recently started a cookie company during the pandemic with his sister that’s been hugely successful.
Drool over the story of Bak’d’s success which is as massive as their cookies
These are the types of stories we want to see from our students. Adversity will come — no one saw a pandemic coming. We want to empower youth to take on the future regardless of the challenges they will face.
YELL embodies the power of community. Want to join them as a mentor or guest speaker? Give them a shout here.
