MindFuel is pleased to announce a $750,000 donation from Cenovus Energy (Cenovus) as part of a three year partnership to help foster learning opportunities for Canadian youth in the innovation sector.
Every year, MindFuel makes a vital difference in providing youth with the skills, confidence, and learning environments to foster STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and innovation knowledge development. MindFuel serves more than 1,600 communities across the country and has invested more than $115 million since 1990 to help prepare youth to be active contributors to Canada's innovation ecosystem.
"MindFuel recognizes the importance of investing in future-ready youth and, through our partnership with Cenovus, we'll be able to make transformational change, particularly in Canada's under-represented youth -- which accounts for 15 per cent of our total population," says Cassy Weber, CEO of MindFuel. "Canada has a critical need to make the innovation sector accessible to youth so that we have a future-ready workforce able to take on the challenges of economic diversification and global competitiveness."
"MindFuel fosters curiosity and creativity, which will develop our future leaders and next generation of innovators," says Trent Zacharias, Cenovus's Director, Community & Indigenous Affairs. "Cenovus knows it's important to help prepare young people for the jobs of today and tomorrow."
The funding from Cenovus will help to enhance accessibility to programs geared to underrepresented youth, including female, Indigenous and economically disadvantaged youth through MindFuel's Tech Futures Challenge (TFC).
The TFC model of success is based on transformative learning through mentorship, experiential learning, and collaboration. TFC has been developed over ten years and moves youth from foundational skills and knowledge development through to ideation and prototyping, through workshops, project-based learning, mentor network development, peer-based connections, and facilitation of project development through subject matter experts. Areas of focus in TFC include digital literacy and coding, robotics, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and computational solutioning.
Other organizations who believe in the critical importance of MindFuel's youth innovation programs include Futures Skills Centre, ATB Financial, Hunter Family Foundation, TC Energy, RBC, Syncrude (operated by Suncor), TELUS Friendly Future Foundation, AltaML, a major anonymous donor, including support from the Government of Canada, ISED (CanCode), PrairiesCan, NSERC PromoScience, and others. For more information on supporters please visit the MindFuel website.
MindFuel's 2023 Tech Futures Challenge is open for registration until January 13, 2023. For more information about registration, the TFC kickoff and past participants, visit The MindFuel Website
