Nurturing social impact at the Timeraiser Startup Accelerator

The Chess for Connection team, comprised of M3 (grade 9) students Andrew, James, April and Ryan, pitches for mentor time and a prize of $500 seed funding at UTS Timeraiser Startup Accelerator pitch night finals in February.

What problems are you passionate about solving and how can you have a social impact? These are the kinds of questions M3 (grade 9) April and her fellow participants in the Timeraiser Startup Accelerator – the UTS after-school entrepreneurship program – started with last fall. April’s thoughts turned to her passion for chess and a chance connection she made last summer with a player named Gilbert Perez. After her brother’s game at the Canadian Open Chess Championships, an older man using a wheelchair approached April and her family, praising and encouraging her brother, and sharing how chess had always been a source of motivation and purpose in his life, while facing disabilities and partial vision loss. A retired physician from Manitoba, he’d represented Canada at the World Chess Championships for People with Disabilities and taught others with physical disabilities how to play chess as a volunteer. 

Inspired by Gilbert, April and her Timeraiser team, M3s Ryan, Andrew and James, wondered if youth-led chess programming could help improve the mental health of seniors through the power of community and connection. 

The result became their social enterprise, Chess for Connection, one of several socially-minded initiatives launched through the Timeraiser program in the 2022-23 school year, where students use design thinking to develop social and technological ventures and then pitch their ideas for mentorship time to volunteer parent and alumni mentors – as well as one award of $500 seed funding. After pitch night, they work together with their mentors to develop their ventures. This year the program had record participation with 36 aspiring student entrepreneurs and 30 UTS alumni and parent volunteer mentors taking part. 

Timeraiser co-leads Joseph Wilson and UTS Head of Innovation and Research Dr. Cresencia Fong at pitch night finals with two of the volunteer mentors, Manish Srivastava P '27 and Tao Wang P '25.

A social bottom line 

“It was really interesting this year that all of the projects had a social bottom line,” says program Co-Leader Joseph Wilson, who brings a wealth of experience as a U of T doctoral student, educational consultant and entrepreneur, and former education lead at MaRS Discovery District. “Over the last three years during the pandemic, students’ sensitivity to issues of social justice, equality and fairness became even more heightened as they became acutely aware of some of the injustices that impact them and their families. It was really nice to see those themes come up in their projects.” 

Students were encouraged by UTS Head of Innovation and Research Dr. Cresencia Fong, who leads the Timeraiser program to connect their social and technological ventures to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. 

Starting in November, Timeraiser students met every two weeks in the UTS maker space, the Lang Innovation Lab, to flush out their ideas from understanding the scope of the issue they’re trying to tackle, to using firsthand market research to determine the viability of their ventures.

Making the pitch

At pitch night finals in February, there was an energetic buzz in the Lang Innovation Lab, as six finalist teams prepared to pitch their ideas for mentorship time from 30 alumni and parent volunteers (many of whom attended online), as well one prize of $500 seed funding. 

Aside from Chess for Connection, the finalists included Food Compass, which aimed to help Torontonians eat healthier with an interactive food map of healthy choices, and Gather, with plans for a website providing a streamlined process to connect like-minded people and sports teams together. 

Another project, Rainbow Refuge, sought to work with schools in Ontario to support LGBTQ2SI+ youth by creating safer spaces and greater belonging for them at school. ReFood planned to create a program at the local level that redistributes leftover food from restaurants to serve community meals for people in need. And lastly, there was Students 4 Students, created by M4s Avi and William to address a need they saw in their own lives.

“At UTS, we have the opportunity to do so many extracurriculars, but for my friends in public school and for me before I came to UTS, it's incredibly expensive,” Avi told the judges and mentors at pitch night. “We had this flash of inspiration to get UTS high school students, who are really talented and have so many opportunities, to help teach what they know to younger students in other schools who might not have access to the same opportunities.” 

Time: the most valuable commodity

Timeraiser co-leads Joseph Wilson (left) and UTS Head of Innovation and Research Dr. Cresencia Fong (right) congratulate M4s (grade 10s) Avi and William for winning the $500 seed funding at pitch night finals for their venture, Students 4 Students. 

Tensions were running high as volunteer judges Ilse Treurnicht P ’04, ’07 (formerly CEO of the MaRS Discovery District), Gavin Pitchford ’76, Jannis Mei ’13, Jasmine Kara ’08, Karl Schabas ’96, Truc Nguyen ’01 and Ying Soong P ’27 stepped out to decide which team would receive the $500 seed money. After much debate, they emerged, and Cresencia and Joseph announced the winners of the $500: Students 4 Students. 

But all students were winners of the most valuable commodity – time worth upwards of $200 to $1,000 per hour – as mentors who attended pledged mentorship hours to help teams transform their nascent enterprises into reality. 

“There were CEOs, doctors and lawyers and other professionals volunteering as mentors, and creative people like me who have entrepreneurial experience and can help with aspects like logistics and marketing and that kind of thing,” says Truc, a marketing communications manager and freelance fashion and lifestyle editor. “There are not that many entrepreneurs in my graduating class, but if we had had this back then maybe more of us would be entrepreneurs now.” 

Taking the idea and making it real 

UTS Timeraiser executives S5s (grade 11s) Nicole and Mia incorporated their non-profit, Future for You, established a board and launched their website since taking part in the 2021-22 Timeraiser program. 

Timeraiser executives S5s (grade 11s) Nicole and Mia know the value of time. In the 2021-22 school year, they won mentorship hours and $1,000 seed funding at pitch night for their non-profit organization called Future for You, which aims to address a significant gap in post-secondary planning tools where students with developmental or intellectual delays and disabilities are underserved, by creating a national website of resources for students, teachers and parents.

“How do you take this great idea and make it real?” is the question one of their mentors, Gavin Pitchford ’76, the CEO and founder of Delta Management and the executive director of Canada’s Clean50 Awards, sought to help Mia and Nicole address. He has been volunteering with Timeraiser since it started in the 2019-20 school year and gave the Future for You team time and $1,000 startup funding. 

“There were a lot of areas we were unsure about, and we got a lot of help from our Timeraiser mentors,” says Nicole. “We’re very thankful for what the Timeraiser program has done for us.” 

Now, Mia says: “Our website is live at futureforyou.ca with postsecondary options and day programs, and we ended up fundraising $7,000 (including the $1,000 seed funding), and took some of that funding to incorporate as a federally registered non-profit. We also created a Board of Directors including two of our mentors from Timeraiser, Gavin Pitchford ’76 and Elvis Wong ’11, as well as UTS Health and Physical Education Teacher Kris Ewing.”

Diverse Entrepreneurship Meetups

Andrew Bromfield, founder and president of Formative Innovations, at the first Diverse Entrepreneurship Meetup, hosted by Timeraiser.

As the Timeraiser executives, Nicole and Mia promoted the program to other students, which helped lead to the record participation. Also new this year were Diverse Entrepreneurship Meetups, after-school events that aim to introduce UTS students and staff to a diverse network of experienced entrepreneurs and foster a community at UTS. The first was Andrew Bromfield, founder and president of Formative Innovations, who told students: “If you want to succeed at a high level in anything you do, confidence is the key. It doesn't matter if you’re an NBA player, you have to have the confidence to take that buzzer shot. And how do you build confidence? Practice.”

With their work at Timeraiser, students are well on their way. The Chess for Connection team was awarded 37 mentorship hours, and is planning a pilot event at the nearby Christie Gardens retirement community. Avi and William have launched their website and their first Students 4 Students workshop took place May 30 at Meadowvale Public School, an after-school workshop on coding led by William for students in grades four to eight. 

Obstacles as opportunities

Cresencia sees Timeraiser as a means to address a larger question: “How might we prepare students to be future-ready in our knowledge society, especially when we know that some of the careers they may get into likely don’t exist yet, and the work world will be ever-changing as they make their way?” 

It’s not so much the ventures students create, but the design thinking and entrepreneurial skills they learn that will be an asset in any workplace, she says. 

“Fostering an entrepreneurial mindset – where obstacles are seen as opportunities for innovation and social impact is valued – is an important life skill to start honing early,” says Cresencia. “The opportunity for students to test their ideas with industry professionals and grow their networks while they are still in high school, and forge authentic connections with our alumni and parent community based on like-minded interests is invaluable for their future in our constantly changing world.”

M3 (grade 9) Warren shares the progress he and his partners, M3s Phoebe, Isaac, Henry and Jibril, made with their venture, Gather, at a wrap-up event for the 2022-23 Timeraiser.