Future Founders Fellowship

The Future Founder’s Fellowship (F3) trains teenagers in leadership, entrepreneurship, and digital skills. It aims to nurture a formidable network of young social innovators who collaborate and leverage technology to address critical challenges affecting their communities.

How the fellowship works

The Future Founder’s Fellowship (F3) is a very practical learning experience where a cohort of participants are supported to work as a team to create a community development project. Such a project must be aligned with one of the sustainable development goals. Participants are supported by the Impact Toolbox team, community-based mentors, and a dedicated teacher mentor who will coordinate and guide the students throughout their journey of creating and implementing their community development project.

While working on their project, fellows will participate in leadership and entrepreneurship training sessions and have the opportunity to be mentored by experienced entrepreneurs and leaders from within the Impact Toolbox network.

What teachers are saying

“I really enjoyed working with the Impact Toolbox and having my students join the F3 program. As a teacher, it was easy to get on board, and the team at Impact Toolbox brought a lot of expertise and resources to the table! They met with my students at school during hours that worked for us and helped them progress in a major project they were working on by teaching them skills in web design, leadership, and storytelling. It was fantastic working with this team! I highly recommend the program to teachers out there with students looking to make a positive impact through their coursework and need that extra boost of expertise, resources, and inspiration to take their project to the next level.”

Andrea Mackintosh

Teacher at Kelowna Secondary School

“It was a pleasure to work alongside like-minded individuals who understand the importance of youth sharing their voice and standing in their power to enact change. Some highlights for me were watching how engaged my students were in the team-building exercises (they loved the joyous chaos of the video-making and jumping over boxes) and seeing them connect with powerful women leaders! They also continue to speak highly of the entire experience, including their time with Impact Toolbox mentoring them at Mentor Night and the online lessons.

Jamie Stevens

Coordinator at Better World Club

Fellowship Implementation

The fellowship is for teens between 13 to 19 years old. It is highly inclusive and prioritizes diversity. We strongly encourage the participation of girls, minority youths, and teens living with disabilities.
We partner with schools, community centres and other organizations serving youth to implement the F3 fellowship.
The F3 has been designed to be flexible, adaptable and customizable to the circumstances of diverse youth communities.
The fellowship is delivered through a blend of virtual live and pre-recorded training sessions. Depending on our partner(s), we also host on-site convening and workshop sessions.
Partner identifies and nominates a cohort of students and provides support throughout the program.

Check out social change projects by previous participants.

Alumni Spotlight

KSS Thrifty Thursday is on a mission to change the consumption and production cycle of clothing while giving back to local charities. Clothing is an essential part of our daily lives, and our current way of producing it has a massive cost to the environment and wallets alike. It’s crucial to change our relationship with clothing; the current fast-paced one-time system isn’t sustainable for anyone. An estimated 10.5 million tons of clothes and textiles in North America are lost to disposal every year. On average, clothes are worn only seven times before being disposed of. Thrifty Thursday is helping to combat this problem by running a school-based and online thrift store where students and community members can shop, swap, or donate used clothing. With the swap shop, we promote a circular economy while increasing the wear time of items that could have ended up in the landfill.

What students are saying

"I think If I could have gone back in time and told my nine year old self about an online thrift shop that I helped to create I don't think she would have believed me. I always was ambitious in one way or another but I felt like I never had the tools to make it a reality. The barrier against my dreams was always the uncertainty and the fact that many people believed that I would amount to nothing. Those people had given up on me before I had even gotten the chance to show my true potential. Impact Toolbox through this program presented me with an opportunity I could have never imagined."

Julia Soleski

Kelowna Secondary School Student

"We were building an online school thrift store with the help of Impact Toolbox through coaching and strategy sessions. It was tremendous help as we were taught step by step in detail with advice and received helpful feedback from an experienced professional. When it comes to entrepreneurship and leadership, I am usually easily intimidated. However, the stories from others' experiences we were told made me realize that it is not as bad as I thought, and I am more capable than I thought."

Priscilla Lao

Kelowna Secondary School Student

Interested in bringing this program to your school or community?

Program Updates