Youth Employment Services: YES to English entrepreneurship

Are you young? Do you have an entrepreneurial spirit? Are you English-speaking? YES says YES you can!

Youth Employment Services – YES – was created in 1995 to provide various support and guidance services to the English-speaking community of Greater Montréal to help Anglophone Quebecers find employment and start businesses.

For more than 11 years now, Canada Economic Development has partnered with YES to deliver a program specifically designed to promote entrepreneurship to Anglophone youth. YES is in fact the only organization that offers assistance, counselling and tools, in English, to English-speaking young people with initiative and an enterprising spirit.

This cooperation has produced tremendous results. In 2008 alone, 1,400 clients availed themselves of YES services for a total of 2,600 visits, up 19 percent over the previous year, and 200 businesses were launched. More than 750 sessions of individual coaching and 150 workshops are given every year. The fact of the matter is that, thanks to a dynamic, accessible and dedicated team, YES has made its mark as THE employment and entrepreneurship resource for the English-speaking community of Greater Montréal.

Some notable successes

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have benefited from YES support include Magenta Studios, launched in 2002 and who now boasts 250 employees in Canada; Wave Generation which employs 11 people and whose clients include such well-known names as Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Fisher Price; and Dr Clown, which has five full-time employees and six consultants in addition to 36 actors who visit 32 health care institutions in Montréal, Québec and Toronto. As Iris Unger, Executive Director of YES, noted: “Over the years we see concrete evidence of businesses that have succeeded as a result of our interventions. We could not do any of this work without the support of CED.”

YES has 17 permanent employees who form the nucleus of the organization, and they are joined by more that 700 volunteers—all from the business community—who give their time freely and are happy to share the tricks of their trade and secrets of their success.

Everything to succeed

Whether it is to obtain advice on how to develop a business plan, information on loans and grants, networking opportunities, guidance, direction, mentorship, training sessions on legal matters, individual counselling services or to visit its reference centre, YES is the ideal place for anyone looking to take the leap and start up a business.

Another of the great strengths of YES is its ability to attract business icons who are willing to serve as mentors and guest speakers at various YES events.

Highlighting these events is the Annual Entrepreneurship Conference which brings together exhibitors, panellists and speakers for day of passion: passion for a business project to be launched, passion for one’s own business, passion for inspiring aspiring young entrepreneurs—, in short, one only has to attend this event once to be won over. This year will mark the 14th Annual Entrepreneurship Conference, to be held April 9, 2011.

Canada Economic Development is proud of this partnership with YES, under the Linguistic Duality Economic Development Initiative, which aims to foster the economic development of official-language minority communities through a range of activities centred on innovation, entrepreneurship, partnerships and economic diversification.

For this initiative, in effect until March 31, 2013, the Agency has been allocated $10.2 million over five years to increase the activities it already undertakes in support of Quebec’s English-speaking minority communities.