Our Projects
In all of our projects our belief is that bringing together a critical mass of youth, creating an environment of possibilities and trust, adding in an experience on a real project with real deadlines for a respected client would lead to:
- Increased self esteem and confidence
- A network of potential mentors, clients or employers
- A social network of their peers
- A recognition of their assets and strengths and the strengths of others in their team development of an ability to be heard
- Development of a resume of incredible work experience
- The confidence to take it further and launch their own venture
- The recognition that they had the power to make a difference in anything they wanted to achieve
Developing a nation of youth that know that they have the power to make a difference is the greatest hope we have for peace and prosperity in our future.
Civic Action Platform
Impactanation is working with partners to enable organizations focused on youth action to better attract, inspire, empower, involve and sustain young people. The civic action platform is for a young person's action, impact, community and future, which can be shared across the sites and programs of multiple stakeholder organizations.
WaterEngage
Impactanation is working the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health at the University of Toronto to develop a program to engage youth to explore the potential for nanotechnology and biotechnology applications to help deliver safe drinking water to communities throughout the world.
WaterEngage connects a worldwide network of young leaders with leading experts, and challenges youth to put their expertise and imagination to work. The first three projects address arsenic contamination in Bangladesh, water scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa and water-related diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Schlumberger SEED-Global Water Project
Impactanation has designed a global water project with Schlumberger, a Fortune 500 company with 30,000 employees and $13.5 billion annual revenues. Schlumberger's corporate foundation, SEED provides computers and connects schools to the internet in the communities where Schlumberger operates.
Impactanation designed a global water project that engages youth to test their local water (to identify contaminants), map the watershed (to understand why they got the results they did) and to explore their cultural connection with water (to help understand how to remediate the process.) A customized Water Fund was set up for SEED to provide $500 toward innovative solutions to local water challenges. Schools in 27 developing nations are participating in this project which has already yielded innovations in Mexico which have applied for patent, and a revival of traditional methods of watershed management in Thailand.
EarthCARE
Impactanation was approached by a firm that said it could reduce energy costs in schools by 5% just by turning off lights and computers. The problem was, how do you get people to change their behaviour?
We designed a youth-led program that fit into every grade of the Ontario, Canada education curriculum requirements. Students did waste, water and energy audits of their schools and in the first year of the program, 70% of the schools participated and saved $1.5 million.
KidsNRG & The NRG Group
Impactanation's Vicki Saunders and Richard Ford founded and ran KidsNRG which later became The NRG Group. They grew it from a not-for-profit to a for-profit private company to a public company in a 5 year time frame.
Youth were engaged in a working and learning environment which developed trust, uncovered beliefs, created real world, paid project experiences, encouraged reflection on the experience, and without exception assisted youth to deepen their belief in themselves and in their ability to achieve their goals. They were assisted to build networks and develop relationships with mentors to improve their chances of success. Most importantly they were challenged in a supportive environment to release their enthusiasm and energy, believing that the possibilities were limitless.
KidsAreIT! & GirlsAreIT!
In April of 1998, KidsNRG was asked by the Ontario Government to develop a program that would foster interest in Information Technology as a career for girls from age 14-18. A team of sixteen girls was promptly selected and given a project to design the program they would want to experience - GirlsAreIT!. Later this program was expanded to include boys in the mix and KidsAreIT! became equally as successful as GirlsAreIT! These programs were designed by youth for youth to develop technology, teamwork and entrepreneurial attitudes and skills.
SheEO competition
As we developed our for profit fund in support of youth entrepreneurship we found that we were only getting about 4% of our business plans from young women. In December of 2000, we created the SheEO competition which was literally a call to action to young women (under 30) to submit business ideas and the winner would receive up to $250,000. Money was raised by Vicki Saunders as she convinced 5 leading women to invest $50,000 in the business idea of a young woman.
The gala celebrating the submissions and the award winner was attended by 500 women and their daughters from corporations, educational institutions, government departments and media agencies. The young women in attendance (over 100 youth) were inspired and encouraged to be the next SheEO. The greatest learning from this model was that women under 30 lacked the confidence and perceived ability to apply for the fund and were uncertain of how to write a business plan despite their good ideas. During the competition, we changed the name to a business idea (versus a business plan) competition and ran some workshops on weekends across the country for people to come and get some help formulating their ideas.