In just 12 weeks, 30 postsecondary student founders have taken their 10 social enterprises to a new level of readiness and real-world impact. Selected from an initial pool of 40 applicants, these ventures participated in the inaugural Enactus Canada Social Enterprise Accelerator – an intensive training program designed to equip students with the skills, mentorship and practical experience needed to refine their business models and build enterprises capable of meaningful growth and scale. The accelerator cumulated in a final a pitch competition where teams competed for a share of $50,000 in seed funding to support the next phase of their ventures.
The program was expertly delivered by the team at the League of Innovators (LOI), Canada’s only founder-focused accelerator designed specifically for youth aged 15-30. Each week students explored key venture-building topics and received coaching from successful founder mentors who challenged them to refine their ideas, strengthen their models, and bring their enterprises to life through pitching.
The Pitch to Secure Funding
The final stage in the accelerator was an 8-minute pitch and Q&A session to a panel of 11 judges of CEOs and Founders. The result was the following social enterprises receiving a share of the generous pool of $50,000 in seed funding:
| Entrehive, Trent University
Hexoris, University of New Brunswick |
Lumóra, BCIT
Nourish, Simon Fraser University |
Watch each of the live pitches by following the links above or view the full pitches and Q&A on our YouTube channel.
Championing and Investing in Postsecondary Student Founders
“Congratulations to these social enterprises, their founders, and team members and thank you to all the projects that applied to the program. It was wonderful to see these founders embrace the opportunities that the Social Enterprise Accelerator and the League of Innovators opened to them, the work that they put into their enterprises through the 12-weeks, and the resulting confidence they demonstrated to the judges. This was an incredibly successful initiative that we expect to offer students again next year,” said Cody de Leijer, Director of Programs, Enactus Canada.
Thank you to our final round judges, the John Dobson Foundation, and our other supporters who made this program a success.
