Innovation & Job News

BetaKit founder Sarah Prevette launches Future Design School

Igor Bonifacic | Wednesday, May 06, 2015

FDS Director of Learnnig, Sandra Nagy with Founder, Sarah Prevette.

A new Toronto-based initiative wants to teach children important problem solving skills through the lens of entrepreneurship.

Started by BetaKit founder Sarah Prevette, Future Design School (FDS) launched last Thursday at MaRS Discovery District.

“Future Design School enables youth through entrepreneurship experience, design learning and real-world experiments,” says Prevette over the phone. “We’re trying to inspire kids to see the world differently, and to foster their own creative confidence.”

Although FDS will offer its first set of workshops in Toronto, Prevette says her team already has partnerships in place to bring the school’s programs to Waterloo and London. They’re not stopping in Ontario, either. According to Prevette, her goal is to bring FDS to the rest of Canada and eventually even the United States.

Prevette was inspired to start Future Design School after examining her own entrepreneurial career. After spending more than ten years in Toronto’s startup ecosystem, she says she noticed a common thread between herself and all her peers: almost everyone she met had fallen into their entrepreneurial career by accident. This realization, she says, led her to start asking herself some questions.

“Why aren’t we teaching entrepreneurship as a viable career path in schools, and why aren’t we teaching the framework for innovation to kids?” says Prevette. “Ultimately, we need to have more smart people focused on solving real problems.”

For those that don’t see value in teaching children how to be entrepreneurial, Prevette says the initiative is more about teaching kids how to solve problems, which is something useful for kids to have no matter what future career they embark upon.

“We want to give kids the tools so that they can innovate meaningful solutions and have an impact upon society,” she says. “That’s what we’re really about.“

Source: Future Design School

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