Park City

Hello to all,

We are the co-founders of the company Park City. Our names are Danielle Azimi and Evan Fortier. I, Danielle Azimi , am currently a student at Toronto French School going into grade 10. Evan Fortier currently goes to Montrcrest and is going into grade 8. Our goal is to create an app called Park City finder. This app will help drivers find convenient and cheap parking and saves time, money, and aggravation.

Recently, the IBM Global Parking Survey found that 60% of drivers in 20 international cities face difficulties with finding parking. Also, 25% of drivers engage in arguments with other motorists over parking. Many people are late for work due to the above matters and this can result to employment loss. Our app is geared towards reducing the amount of people that have difficulties finding parking at their destination.

Furthermore, to develop our app in the future, we plan on creating a sticker with a barcode for cars that will help reduce the amount of parking tickets. When the parking meter is about to expire, the customer will receive a notification stating that they should load their account with more minutes. Many people may think that this will be a loss of revenue for governments. However, this statement is not true. If there are 400 people with expired parking meters and only 100 parking enforcement officers, 300 people will avoid a parking ticket. However, these 300 people will still be notified and will pay for more minutes to avoid the risk of receiving a ticket.

We hope to make people’s daily lives better,

Danielle Azimi and Evan Fortier

Light, Empty, and Hungry

By: Jullian A. Yapeter, Craft Cupid

These are all words that could describe a teenager’s wallet. Canadian youth are extremely talented and eager to work in order to give back to the community, as well as to their bank accounts. From website designing and photography to playing music and writing, as the name suggests, Craft Cupid encompasses all crafts. On the website, youth from all over the nation can sign up and build their portfolios, uploading pictures and videos of all their previous work for potential employers to view.

Employers, whether they’d be start-up companies, event planners, or just any homeowner, will be able to surf our database and search for specialised and talented students who are willing to work for a very reasonable wage.

Youth will be able to effectively find freelance jobs, earn the extra money they need and at the same time, add to their list of valuable experiences. Without actively and constantly looking for a job, Craft Cupid will always be there to perpetuate their marketing and attract employers to hire them based on their portfolio page. Having that said, employers will also be able to create job postings and allow the active and eager youth to search and apply for a job. A testimonial section and a rating system will be installed on the pages of each Craft Cupid member and can be changed and updated only by past employers. This way, we will effectively maintain the trustworthiness, accuracy, and security of our website. Employers will be able to search for local talents which will allow for a convenient employee-employer relationship. Signing up as a member of Craft Cupid as a youth job searcher or as an employer is completely free. We receive revenue only after we succeed in helping someone find a job, earning our profit on a commission basis.

Our ultimate goal is to help the youth help the community; to set the foundation of our future to a healthy and fulfilling start towards wonderful careers. As a company, we have two focuses. One of them is to advocate for youth talent and allow young and motivated workers to contribute to the society while earning extra money from a young age. Another one of our focuses is to help employers to get things off of their to-do lists and receive quality work with a low budget. Being teenagers ourselves, we empathise with talented youth who cannot seem to find a job suitable to their talents and passion. Being human beings, we understand the abundance of the need for things to be done well and for a great price.

In the future we hope to be involved in many community programs to help the growth of the influence of youth on and throughout the nation. All in all, the potential is huge and the market will never die out. Cheers to the beginning of a more efficient future.

Chief Craft Cupid,

Jullian A. Yapeter

-Go on, Take flight-

First Post!

By: Dasha & Ethan, G2G

Originally published on: http://g2gcanada.wordpress.com/ 

Hi everyone!

We’re writing this from the MaRS building in Toronto where we are taking part in the MaRS Future Leaders Summer Program. This is our first blog post – a bit nerve-racking but very exciting! Today, we tweeted that we’ve done so many new things: we’re going to a new camp, we’ve opened a new Twitter account, and we’re hoping to develop a new app! We can also add creating a new blog to the list! (BTW – you can follow us on Twitter @G2Gcanada). We’d like to thank MaRS for giving us all of these new, wonderful opportunities.

You’re probably wondering what G2G is. We hope to develop a social networking application where commuters can share and update information to help make commuting a reliable and predictable experience. There’s so much stress and frustration involved with commuting and we’d like to make this important, everyday process simpler and enjoyable.

We’re still in research and development mode and we’re learning a lot. We’ll try to post lots of interesting information and update you on our journey. We hope that you’ll stick with us!

Got to Go,

D and E

Introducing the co-founders of Youth in Motion…

By: Isabelle & Lakni, Youth in Motion

Greetings,

As relatively new co-founders to our business, Isabelle and I are taking trial and error to a whole new level. Luckily for us, we have one another’s support, as well as a nurturing community from the MaRS Discovery District. We are grateful for your time and hope you find our documented journey as entrepreneurs to be enlightening and inspiring. Now, on to the introductions!

Hello, my name is Isabelle and I am one of the co-founders of Youth in Motion. I personally wanted to start Youth in Motion as a way of getting kids and teenagers doing more exercise. Earlier this year, I wrote and delivered a speech on Internet Addiction Disorder. In a world full of technology, kids are drawn to screens and monitors and it becomes somewhat of an addiction. I believe that creating a fun environment and a motivation for kids to exercise more often would help combat child obesity, other future health problems and Internet Addiction Disorder.

Hello everyone, I’m Lakni, the other half to this whole.  Before becoming an entrepreneur like Isabelle, I experienced many symptoms of the Internet Addiction Disorder: A decreased attention span, neglect of sleep and strained vision. Fortunately, I understand why many adolescents spend so much time on the Internet, and choose to challenge its influence.

Cyberspace is full of opportunities to socialize, to work, and to enjoy. It presents many Saturday night options all from the comfort of your room.  In fact, aside from browsing the web, there are limited economical ways for one to spend her afternoon in Toronto.

Our idea is to introduce a motivating recreational sports club for kids ages 7-16 to have fun, meet new people and stay fit.  With only $500 spent yearly, you will have access to pools, yoga classes, rock climbing walls, zumba lessons, and many more kid-friendly activities.

Lastly, our next step as a budding business is to reach out to other fitness centres, community centres and governments to see any interests in partnerships and funding for our sports club. We see the effect of lack of exercise, social interaction and IAD in our community, and wish to provide kids with a safe and healthy alternative before 2018.

Cheers!

Isabelle and Lakni

Co-Founders

RewardMe

By: Jonathan Arta Yapeter, RewardMe

RewardMe.com is a website that allows parents to easily and quickly set up customizable chores for their kids to do. The kids would earn points by doing the chores and could spend them on fun rewards. The more the points spent, the higher the rewards.

The parents would be able to set up customizable chores. They could set up a generic chore such as ‘Do the dishes’ or ‘Mow the lawn’. However, they could set up their own chore such as ‘Paint the fence’. The parents would also be able to set how many points the kids would get by doing that specific chore. So, mowing the lawn could be 10 points and doing the dishes could be 5 points.

The rewards could also be customized. The parents could make it a generic rewards such as ‘1 hour of playtime’. However, the parents could customize it to their own reward such as ‘Canada’s Wonderland’. Furthermore, the parents are also able to set a ‘fine’ if they don’t do their chores, or didn’t do it right. If the kids get a fine, they would lose points instead of gaining them.

For the kids to spend the earn the points, the kids would be able to checkmark the chore that they have finished. The parents would then have to verify that the kid has actually done the chore. The kids would then be able to cash in the chore for the points. They could then spend the points on the rewards their parents set up for them. Once they redeem their points for rewards, the ‘Points Bank’ will be deducted by the amount of the reward. In the future, we hope to be able to partner up with different companies such as Cineplex, EB Games or Canada’s Wonderland to get special rewards such as a ‘Buy 1 get 1 free’ or a discount on the products.