Students from both Fleming College and Trent University set aside any academic rivalry to represent Peterborough at the Enactus Canada post-secondary sustainable entrepreneurship competition this past week.
Enactus — an acronym for “entrepreneurial,” “action,” and “us” — is a global platform encouraging universities and colleges to start social enterprises and do community work to address the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Originally founded in 1975 as a U.S. non-profit organization, Enactus expanded in 1995 and now operates across 33 countries and more than 1,000 post-secondary campuses.
“We’re training the leaders of tomorrow to do business in a way that is sustainable and doesn’t harm the environment,” says Raymond Yip Choy, School of Business professor at Fleming College and faculty member for Enactus Fleming College. “We’re looking at the triple bottom line, which is not only profit, but people and planet.”
Enactus Fleming College was launched in 2017 and now makes up one of the larger teams to have competed against 66 other schools in Canada in the Enactus Canada National Exposition in Toronto from May 14 to 16.
Having won the regional championships in the youth empowerment competition earlier this year, the team competed at the national level in Toronto this week with a presentation on their project called “Keys to Me.” Through community partnerships, the project teaches high school and post-secondary students about life skills through a set of modules surrounding financial literacy, mental health and well-being, entrepreneurship, and other skills for success.
Enactus Fleming College held three pitch competitions for budding entrepreneurs and gave away thousands of dollars in prizes and opportunities for community grants. Reaching out to five different cities, the project has impacted more than 1,600 youth.
“We are teaching students they can be entrepreneurs because most of our employment in the Canadian economy comes from small and medium businesses,” says Yip Choy. “We need these students to be starting businesses and many of them don’t know they can, so we’re teaching them through this project.”
The Fleming team finished third place in the competition, won the 2024 RBC Future Launch Project Accelerator Best Project, and was named the top school in Canada for student engagement.
This year has built on the school’s success as, in the past few competition seasons, Yip Choy was awarded top faculty advisor and the team was the first recipient of a collaboration award from Enactus Canada.
“We are an award-winning team,” says Yip Choy, noting that Enactus Trent University also showed great progress from last year’s nationals. “Peterborough absolutely punches above its weight category.”
In the main competition, Enactus Fleming College shared a 12-minute presentation speaking to both the “Keys to Me” and “Paper Planet” projects. The latter extends the life of used office paper by turning it into compostable planting plots, and planter kits (consisting of 25 planters, seeds, soil, instructions, and lesson plans) are then sold to classrooms.
“What we’re doing is stopping stuff from going into landfills, and we’re making something that is commercially viable,” says Yip Choy, noting that if they secure a stable production facility, they would offer employment for people who are differently abled. “It checks all the boxes on environmental sustainability, business practices, teaching youth how to live better, and providing employment.”
Enactus Trent University spoke on their current project, which preserves food waste like orange peels which are often not discarded properly to convert into organic products like a protein.
“Their next step is partnering with the businesses who showed some interest and figuring out how to collect the orange peels in a way that’s going to work and be sustainable,” says Melanie Buddle, the faculty advisor for Enactus Trent University.
“They’re working on checking in with other departments on our campus like chemistry to see that they’re getting the right formulation. So, they’ve already done test runs, but their next step is to actually get it to go bigger and bring it out into the community.”
Though they were in competition with one another, both Fleming College and Trent University teams were proud to have represented Peterborough together.
“Having two Enactus teams at the two post-secondary institutions in Peterborough provides a really great opportunity for some mentorship and collaboration,” says Buddle. “Fleming has been very generous in helping our team.”
The two teams have also collaborated on Project Tikinaagan, which assists First Nations communities by offering training, resources, and support — inspiring Enactus Canada to encourage more Indigenous work in nation-wide projects.
“Every project is not just a business, it’s almost an innovative idea or something that can help another group or help support a community,” says Buddle.
Despite the success of Fleming College’s team and the role they play as mentors to Trent students, Yip Choy acknowledges they may have to make changes given the uncertainty of the faculty’s future due to the recent suspension of 29 programs at the college — including business courses that some of the faculty teach.
“I don’t know if we’re going to have a business school in a few months,” he says. “Our passion is these students, and we need them to continue, so we may have to consolidate our projects and scale down a bit.”
While the future of the local platform is uncertain, Yip Choy is certain it would pose a major loss to the students involved.
“Students come in and they get to work with other passionate students who are high performing,” Yip Choy says. “They learn entrepreneurship, they learn teamwork, they learn to present, they learn how to talk to investors, they learn customer service.”
“It’s real-life stuff and what happens with these students is enough for students to get jobs. It’s really important that this continues at Fleming College because the benefit to our local community and even the communities overseas is significant and life changing.”
To learn more about Enactus Fleming College’s projects, visit enactusfleming.ca.
