Montreal Community Entrepreneurship Awareness Group

 

Title: Community Entrepreneurship Awareness Group

Estimated Duration: The project is a long term project that will be established as a community non-profit organization and will be sustained by the community for the community. The actual establishment of this project is expected to take two months for the preparation of the full proposal and to prepare initial advertisement material and presentations before launching the project.

Objectives:  The objective of this project is to promote entrepreneurship in Quebec and to link people with entrepreneurial ideas to the proper resources including funding, mentorship, consulting etc… Even though the mentorship and consulting services will be open for all interested individuals the target audience that will be addressed by our advertisement and promotion will be the Muslim community in Montreal and most importantly Muslim women and mothers.

Introduction:

Entrepreneurship is a vital component in the Canadian and Quebec economy. The importance of small to medium size businesses has been supported by a paper published by Human Resources and Social Development Canada. According to the said government agency small and medium size businesses constitute 43% of the Canadian GDP and they have contributed the most to creating employment opportunities over the past few years; while large companies of over 499 employees shed 184,000 jobs, the small firms of under 100 employees created 661,000 employment opportunities. Many of the employment opportunities created were also self employment.

Furthermore, it has been proven that self employed individuals and employees of small firms enjoy a higher level of job satisfaction than employees of large firms or employees of the public sector.

Due to the reasons mentioned above and others it is important to promote and support entrepreneurship in our Quebec community. Currently there are many organizations in Montreal that work to fulfill that objective through providing support to ambitious individuals with business ideas and other work. However, these organizations do not get much visibility among the Muslim and immigrant community in Montreal. Many of the university and college students are not aware of what organizations are out there to support them to make their business ideas come true.

Therefore the purpose of this project is mainly to reach out to prospective entrepreneurs and business people and show them what resources are available to them.  CEAG would also provide them with basic advisory on how to prepare a business plan, how to pitch your idea, where to go for help etc…

Even though the services of CEAG will be open to all interested individuals the focus in terms of outreach and promotion will be Muslim youth and Muslim women. Our hope is to empower them to voice their ideas and work to make them a reality; a reality that can help them grow financially and professionally while helping stir the Quebec economy and increase the healthy competition the Quebec market.

The advantage our group has in terms of reaching out to Muslim youth and Muslim women is that both Abdullah and Bilal are well connected with various Muslim groups in Montreal, especially the Muslim Student Associations of various universities. As such we would be able to identify the various events at which we can present or do tabling. We can also organize our own presentations and reach out to organizations within our network to help us reach out to housewives and young youth that are still exploring their career opportunities.

We are hoping by these efforts to help stir the economy in Montreal and improve the economic position of the Muslim community and help the Muslim women gain their economic independence.

Project Leadership (We can polish up this section later)

1-      Bilal Abd el-Qader: a successful entrepreneur who has initiated many projects and businesses. He also has an MBA from Concordia University and is currently a PhD candidate at Concordia in Finance.

2-      Abdullah Husen: An active student of accountancy at Concordia University who has occupied many executive positions in student organizations including R4 Concordia, the Muslim Student Association, and Rotaract Concordia.

Collaborating institutions (potential collaborators)

Entrepreneurship club Concordia, MSA, Human Resources Canada, Investissement Quebec, YES.

Methodology

The work of CEAG can be broken down into two components:

a)   Promotional activity

This includes activities to encourage young people and Muslim women to become entrepreneurs or at least consider it as a future career. This will be done mainly through motivational speeches and presentations that will demonstrate to the audience the advantages of self-employment and also prove that it is not an impossible or difficult path, but rather it is doable as long as one seeks the proper support and mentorship.

These presentations will be given at various events that the Muslim community holds. The presentations would also be presented at various CEGEPs and highschools in Montreal to show the young people what opportunities are present for them in entrepreneurship.

b)   Advisory activity

This includes i) connecting the prospective entrepreneurs with various organizations and funding facilities and ii) help them develop a business plan and help them learn how to pitch an idea successfully.

Conclusion

We believe that by reaching out to the young people in Quebec and to Muslim women we would be able to attract some of the most brilliant minds to develop and run successful business ideas that would help the economy at large and the local community through giving these individuals job satisfaction and economic independence.