Eligibility

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS

Students enrolled in a public or private educational institution attending:http://www.ameqenligne.com/index.php

• an elementary or secondary school, a vocational training centre or an educational center
• a college (or an affiliated centre)
• a university (or an affiliated centre)
• a government school
• any educational institution recognized by the Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport (MELS)

*Preschool students are not eligible for the contest.

ELIGIBLE PROJECTS

Entrepreneurial projects done as school or extracurricular projects and completed over the course of the school year (between June 2011 and June 2012) by the students. Most project activities must have begun before the application deadline of March 19, 2012, so that the development of the students’ entrepreneurial characteristics can be evaluated and validated.

The following points should make it possible to fully understand what we expect from projects submitted to the Contest.

DEFINITION OF AN ENTREPRENEURIAL PROJECT

An entrepreneurial project is intended to produce something new, to innovate, to take action to create a product, service or event that has value for the community concerned because it meets a specific need.

It is essential for the students to be involved in the implementation of the project by actively participating in decision making and the performing tasks, and this must be reflected in the application package. Among other things, these projects will also have enabled students to develop autonomy, a sense of responsibility, creativity, leadership, solidarity, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-actualization, initiative, the ability to make decisions, a desire to surpass themselves, a desire to excel at work and, in some cases, an appreciation for cooperative values.

A successful entrepreneurial project must:

• meet a real need of a target group or respond to an issue in the community;
• feature an original, innovative action that has value for the community concerned because it solves a problem or meets the identified need;
• be genuinely entrepreneurial: it must lead to actions to create a product, service or event that is then promoted among the target group;
• mobilize students around a common goal, have a certain scope;
• have an impact on the community or the target group;
• be instructive for students, allowing them to develop their entrepreneurial skills.

An entrepreneurial project must involve a degree of difficulty, but remain within the grasp of the students concerned. Students who successfully meet a challenge that is neither too hard nor too easy will enjoy a feeling of satisfaction that will encourage them to repeat the experience.

They must be guided by a teacher or any other person representing the educational institution. If the project is supervised by someone from outside the educational institution (e.g. an economic development consultant, a youth centre worker, a young entrepreneurship awareness officer, a member of Junior Aachievement Québec), a resource person from the educational institution must provide support and follow-up.

Registered projects will involve one of the following activities:

• setting up a business in the school
• setting up a cooperative in the school
• organizing an entrepreneurial project submitted in the form of an educational, sports, cooperative, community-oriented, cultural or artistic, technological or scientific, regional or international activity that helps develop the students' entrepreneurial values.

IMPORTANT NOTES

• Recurrent projects, which have already been submitted to the Contest and which carry over from one year to the next, are accepted if it is shown that the students have been able to develop them by making a significant change or adding value over the course of the year in question. A project may have, for example, taken on greater scope, involved new partners and collaborators, targeted a bigger or different audience, improved a product, service or event, or found a new way of reaching its audience. Above all, it must be shown that the steps of implementation (tasks performed by the students) resulting from the change or the added value are sufficient and appropriate to justify the project's new eligibility.

Example 1: The school canteen is an entrepreneurial project that began last year. This year the students have decided to reorient the project by using reusable dishes instead of disposable ones, in order to respect the environmental values advocated by the school
Example 2: The students who run the student newspaper have been innovative this year, offering an electronic version of the newspaper that is updated daily and accompanied by a blog on the school’s Web site.

Note: When the only change in a recurrent project is the participation of new students, the change is not considered an added value and the project is therefore inelegible.

• Hypothetical business plans that do not result in an actual activity within the specified time frame are not eligible for the Contest.
• A business project by a student or group of students, 18 years of age or over and enrolled in an educational institution, may be entered in either the Student Entrepreneurship division or the Business Creation division. However, to be accepted in the Business Creation division, the business project must meet the eligibility requirements.
• A Student Entrepreneurship project, whether or not it wins a prize, may be entered in a subsequent year in the Business Creation division, provided it meets the eligibility requirements.
• The same project may be submitted to only one local Contest representative, therefore to only one educational institution.