Former PM Launches Business Training Program

Former PM Launches Business Training Program

Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 14:55

 

 

A new business program at a high school in Regina will give Aboriginal students hands-on business experience.

 

That’s according to former Canadian prime minister Paul Martin, who introduced the program.

 

Martin was in Regina earlier this week to launch the program, which is part of the Martin Aboriginal Education Initiative (MAEI), at Scott Collegiate.

 

He says the program teaches students in grades 11 and 12 principles such as the basics of opening a business, marketing and accounting.

 

Martin says at the end of the two-semester course, students will have a good idea what business is all about, and what it would take to start one.

 

“At the same time, they’re asked to start a business, and so they’re provided with a certain amount of start-up capital — a little bit of money — and what they do is they design the kind of business that they want, and then they start it, in order so they have some real-life experience,” he says.

 

The former PM says this type of education will give Aboriginal students a jumpstart to starting their own businesses.

 

The first program of this kind was done in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Martin says it had a success rate of more than 75 per cent.