Tech activity in Brampton is at an all-time high. In the last month, the City of Brampton’s Economic Development Office supported four events that drew out hundreds of the city’s talented youth innovators, angel investors, and professional newcomers.
In March, we partnered with Chinguacousy S.S. to help co-host their annual hackathon – WolfHacks. In a huge first for the GTA, we worked with Morguard to host WolfHacks in the former Sears unit at Bramalea City Centre. You’d be hard-pressed to find another city that’s held a hackathon in a major mall.
The 14-hour event brought out more than 200 students from across the Peel region (as well as a few from Toronto)! The group of computer science enthusiasts, both novice and experienced spent the day building solutions to some of societies most pressing issues such as waste management, education, and cybersecurity. Students had the opportunity to work with industry mentors and hear about their stories first-hand.
In order to support these young entrepreneurs, we need to build an ecosystem that can provide the necessary resources. This is where istarthub comes in. Following WolfHacks, we had the pleasure of working with Cross Border Angels to launch the istarthub regional accelerator program in Brampton. This is the first of it’s kind.
We filled The Den at Sheridan’s Davis campus with 50 angel investors and 11 of the most innovative startups from across the GTA. It was a lively night with tons of interest and engagement from the investors. Brampton is slowly becoming the city where entrepreneurs seeking funding turn to.
The action continued the next day back at City Hall.
Our city is full of wonderfully talented immigrants. Sadly, this very qualified demographic of our talent pool often goes unrealized. We partnered with Asia Shahulhameed, a strong community champion and leader of international anti-money laundering efforts at BMO, to address this issue.
Asia packed out a boardroom in West Tower with highly qualified women across the Peel region struggling to build their career. She curated a panel consisting of other women and immigrants who have built successful careers in Canada to share their stories and tips on how to make it here. This is one of the first events of its kind that we’ve had the pleasure of supporting. We’re looking forward to working with Asia to bring more value to the women and immigrants in our workforce.
Finally, we ended off the weekend in Lab B with the Brampton Multicultural Youth Council’s “Reppin’ Brampton: Innovation” event. The event focused on exploring pertinent issues in our society that affect the future of innovation. Students were given problem statements to create solutions around and then pitch the panel. We were presented with many creative and innovative solutions. Events like these always leave the community in wonder of how talented Brampton’s youth are.
If there was any doubt about the talent and innovation in our city, we’re quickly helping put those to rest. The spirit has always been here. We’re just activating it.