Thursday, July 26, 2018
A big thank you to Libro Credit Union who continues to support GreenHouse from its Prosperity Fund. A fund that recognizes initiatives, which focus on regional economic development, money smarts, and youth leadership.
GreenHouse invests these funds in sales training and coaching that help students launch impactful ideas for social good.
At this summer’s Social Impact Showcase, we heard from those who were awarded the Big Ideas Challenge Fellowship in April and since that time have been working hard and diligently with GreenHouse on creating change in the fields of clean tech, mental health, accessibility and child wellbeing.
The 2018 Big Ideas Fellows are:
- Rachel Thorburn for Resilient Minds Consulting with mental health organizations and other non-profits
- Pablo Amaya for Elevate-ing People with Down syndrome - and winner of Accessibility Directorate of Ontario $5,000 entrepreneurship award.
- Lauren Smith for Filtering Harmful Microplastics from Water - and secured a spot in the 8th cohort of the Accelerator Centre JumpStart Program and was awarded $30,000
- Cassie Myers for Measuring the Impact of Youth Leadership Programs for Girls - and winner of the Velocity Fund grant of $25,000.
“GreenHouse has added a lot to my education. My business background focused on for-profit, and I never really understood about social entrepreneurship. I didn’t realize that there was funding out there to support ventures like mine.” – Pablo Amaya
Supporting students in identifying and understanding pressing problems to solve, as well as training and skill development on design thinking practices is what GreenHouse is all about. Students go on to inspire others in creating social impact ventures to help cultivate innovation and tackle problems in the social environment space. Tania Del Matto, Director of GreenHouse, said,
“ We are proud of the progress our GreenHouse Fellows have made over the past few months in moving their ventures forward, all are working hard on securing partnerships and revenue. As past Fellows have demonstrated, for every $1 we invest in them, they attract an additional $8 via other investors or direct sales revenue.”
Libro Credit Union has been a huge contributor to this initiative. Jordan Moat, Libro regional manager for Kitchener-Waterloo came personally to see the awarded students and continue to demonstrate Libro’s passion for investing in the communities.
This grant has helped the continued growth of the Big Ideas Challenge, a competition that creates Fellowship opportunities for student entrepreneurs to receive in-depth sales training, coaching and funding to further develop their ideas and initiatives. Past Fellows have gone onto launch ventures such as: Demine Robotics, Curiato, and PASS kit, to name a few.
“It’s been really useful to receive training in all areas of running a business. It’s also been really nice to be around others whose business at the core is about doing good.” – Lauren Smith
For more information about Libro Credit Union and the Prosperity fund program, visit www.libro.ca/community or follow #prosperhere on social media for pictures, videos and more.