How Surrey-based PowerPlay is nurturing entrepreneurship in B.C. and beyond

On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, a classroom at UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) is buzzing with bright ideas. Inside, four groups of kids, all under 15 years of age, have been tasked with creating an environmentally friendly  product. They are past and present participants of the PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs program, which helps students in grades 4 to 8 launch their own businesses.

SALA professor Mari Fujita is hosting this event to offer some of her graduating students the opportunity to mentor young entrepreneurs, and at the same time offer the kids a fun innovation challenge.

Fourteen-year-old Pari Soni is part of a group that’s designing ways to use upcycled materials to make wind chimes. Their colourful prototype is taped to a board in the corner.

“In schools, a lot of arts and crafts materials like pencils, buttons, ribbons and fabrics get thrown into the landfill,” Soni says, making her business case. “Our wind chimes can turn those materials into something beautiful. And if you break one, we can repair it, or, if you don’t want it, you can give it back to us; we can deconstruct it and make it into a new one, so the cycle continues.”

Many of the kids in the room already have active businesses. Soni, for example, sells handmade notebooks ($3-6) and custom travel tumblers ($7-12) on Instagram. She can also be spotted with her own stall at the Clayton Community Market in Surrey. Last November she received an order for 500 Note Well notebooks, which took her over a month to fulfil. “Because I’m still in school, I’d work on them every weekend,” she says. “One time I binge-watched the entire Toy Story series on my couch while making them.”

As each group goes up to pitch their ideas to the room, passersby pause to see where all the excitement is coming from. And when peers and mentors ask questions, the young entrepreneurs use humour, facts and figures to back their businesses.

This is what Bill Roche envisioned when he first developed PowerPlay as an experiential learning program in 1999. Roche started his career in engineering but pivoted to serve his passion for teaching and education. “So many of my friends and colleagues expressed that they weren’t happy in their careers but felt like they had to do [those jobs],” he says, “and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could help kids discover their passions from an early age?”

Today, PowerPlay develops an entrepreneurial mindset in kids by teaching them how to create business plans, conduct market research and make and sell products. It also encourages the kids to donate a portion of their profits to charity.

Some teachers use the program to achieve their subject-specific learning outcomes while others run it as a separate project all year long. “It’s very easy for kids or teachers to embed cultural and traditional practices into the project,” says Roche. Hutterite communities in Saskatchewan, for example, have taken money out of the equation because it’s against their philosophy. “But they still see an equally high engagement level [with PowerPlay].”

In 2017, after Charles Chang, founder of Vancouver-based Lyra Growth Partners and Vega protein powder, made a $10-million donation to establish the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship at SFU, Roche joined forces with him to expand PowerPlay’s reach. They transformed the program into a nonprofit called the Young Entrepreneurs of Canada Association, and the move, coupled with funding from the Government of Canada, has helped PowerPlay land in 400 schools across Canada.

Now the charity is backed by big names like SFU, CIBC and Telus, and it hosts events in partnership with organizations like the Surrey Board of Trade. It supported around 28,000 young entrepreneurs in 2023, including Surrey student Ishaan Dhaliwal, who created a custom sign business for his project. He won Best Product at a PowerPlay showcase event last year and later sold 120 signs (at $10 each) at a hockey tournament. And this year, athletic eighth-grader Luke Malpass started Sport Spritz, a spray that can remove post-game odour from bags and kits.

Since 2017, students have donated an estimated $250,000 to charities through the program.

A 2023 study by Johns Hopkins University found that, by turning kids into decision-makers, PowerPlay is both educational and engaging. Several B.C. teachers vouch for it, too, insisting that it helps struggling learners find success in school.

“[Students] see an expanded view of their potential, and they actually start seeing mistakes as a learning opportunity,” says Roche.

A similar study by SFU surveyed over 2,400 students and 40 teachers in Surrey and Langley to conclude that PowerPlay does demonstrate an increased growth mindset in kids, and that “entrepreneurial traits like vision, perseverance, creative problem-solving and learning agility will be critical for all workers to employ” in the coming years.

At UBC, it’s clear that PowerPlay’s reach extends beyond the classroom as it helps students like Soni nurture their passions even after the program ends. “There are so many different things that an entrepreneurial mindset comes with and PowerPlay provides the tools to help you,” she says.

On the Radar

According to co-founder and executive director Bill Roche, PowerPlay is active in four provinces. In 2023, it worked with:

• 286 schools and 21,800 students in B.C.
• 114 schools and 6,200 students in  the rest of Canada

Studies on PowerPlay suggest that:

• The program generates an 11 percent increase in growth mindset, which will help students thrive in an emerging economy
• Participants demonstrate 26-59 percent increases in competencies such as creativity, critical thinking and communications
• 80 percent of students enjoyed being in the program and would recommend it to their friends