Entrepreneurship crucial to keeping youth home Making loans available top priority, community congress delegates told

By IAN FAIRCLOUGH / Valley Bureau

CORNWALLIS PARK - Promoting youth entrepreneurship is important to keeping young people in their home communities, delegates at the Kespuwick Community Congress heard here Tuesday.

At a panel discussion on youth out-migration, delegates to the community economic development conference were told that more than half of young people, aged 15 to 29, leave their rural homes because of poor work prospects, and only a quarter of them return within 10 years.

JoAnne Akerboom, senior vice-president of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Education and Development, said entrepreneurship offers a way to address the out-migration of rural youth.

(The centre was formed in 1993 and is a provincial and federal partnership to introduce youth entrepreneurship into the public school system.)

"In communities where jobs are scarce, competition for employment can be tough," she said. "Youth compete with older, more skilled, well-connected applicants. With fewer jobs to go around, accessing the rural job market can be daunting at best, and debilitating at worst."

She said that through self-employment, young people create opportunities for themselves and others, gaining the skills and life experiences that are critical to succeed in today's economy.

Viable businesses lead to more jobs for local people or bring those who have left back home, she said.

"It's the best way to revive the community," Ms. Akerboom said in an interview.

She said recent research by the centre in three rural Nova Scotia communities explored the obstacles and challenges young people face in starting their own business.

The organization came up with 38 recommendations, based on input from young people, young entrepreneurs, and service providers.

The top recommendation called for the removal, or increase, in the current limit of capital available to youth, and enhancement of the existing loan programs.

"In Nova Scotia, 41 per cent of youth get their money from term loans and 27 per cent from personal loans. This underscores the necessity to make more money available . . . to start businesses," Ms. Akerboom said.

She said there has been a marked increase in business startups by young people. While only five per cent of young people saw entrepreneurship as a career choice in the late 1980s, that number was 64 per cent a decade later.

"Entrepreneurship is the No. 1 career choice now among young people," she said.

The conference, hosted by the Annapolis Basin Conference Centre, continues until Thursday.