{"id":31815,"date":"2022-08-25T15:49:40","date_gmt":"2022-08-25T19:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=31815"},"modified":"2022-08-25T15:49:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-25T19:49:47","slug":"fashion-forward-to-power-washers-students-find-success-in-entrepreneur-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/fashion-forward-to-power-washers-students-find-success-in-entrepreneur-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Fashion forward to power washers, students find success in entrepreneur program"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amanda Lum has always had a passion for art and \u201cspreading joy in everyone\u2019s lives\u201d \u2013 and, this summer, she was able to combine her two passions while learning valuable business lessons through the Ontario\u2019s Summer Company Program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Administered locally by the York Small Business Enterprise Centre, a part of the Regional Municipality of York, nine high school and university students from across York Region received grants to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams this summer, helping to bring new ideas to life and provide services to the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis program provides mentorship, training, as well as a grant of up to $5,000 to get their businesses started and [students] get a lot of value in that,\u201d says Vivian Ho-Tam, Small Business Consultant with York\u2019s Economic Development Strategy Office. \u201cIt\u2019s not just a matter of here you go, go start a business; there\u2019s guidance along the way, mentorship along the way, and if you don\u2019t have the finances, are some resources to help with that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several of this year\u2019s grant recipients had the opportunity to promote their businesses last Thursday in a showcase held at Newmarket\u2019s Upper Canada Mall. Among them was Amanda, whose Smol Art By AL shop has been able to thrive on such platforms as Etsy and Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was really interested in creating a business like this because I am passionate about art and spreading joy in everyone\u2019s lives,\u201d she explains. \u201cI decided to do my art in a physical form and thought what better way to do it than creating art prints you can decorate on your wall or put stickers on your pencil case or your notebook so you can see it every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just want to spread some positivity through colourful drawings. I don\u2019t even know if I would be able to start a business without a grant. It gave me the confidence as well as the financial ability to be able to create high quality prints and I would be afraid of the financial risk that would come with it. I was able to come up with many different ideas, many different products using the money from the grant.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amanda\u2019s art incorporates what she describes as \u201ccute animal characters\u201d with different personalities, arranging them into different poses. Her art also encompasses her \u201clove of food and cute desserts\u201d and these can either fly solo or share space with her animal characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While tapping into new audiences this summer thanks to the grant, Amanda has balanced this with planning her post-secondary career. This September, she will attend the University of Waterloo to study Life Sciences Biology \u2013 but no matter what the future has in store, she\u2019s determined to keep her business, and her passion, going strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really enjoyed selling these art prints and stickers throughout the summer, so I will be definitely continuing this whole year,\u201d she says. \u201cI think especially in university, people would be interested in having stickers to decorate their school supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One entrepreneur who still has another year to decide what they want to after high school was Suleman Shah, a Grade 12 student in East Gwillimbury, who used his grant to start a unique clothing line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After finding out about the grant program from his guidance counsellor, he enrolled not only to get his line of t-shirts, the designs of which he says \u201cemphasize Islamic morals\u201d, off the ground but \u201clearn the many fundamentals of business management and accounting \u2013 skills that I never learned by myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really like fashion and the ability to dress yourself according to your personality type,\u201d he says. \u201cI chose clothing because it can be used as a more creative medium and I\u2026 also saw a lot of clothing brands that don\u2019t typically follow Islamic morals and I wanted a business that actually follows them instead of going along with the herd.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amanda Lum has always had a passion for art and \u201cspreading joy in everyone\u2019s lives\u201d \u2013 and, this summer, she was able to combine her two passions while learning valuable business lessons through the Ontario\u2019s Summer Company Program. Administered locally by the York Small Business Enterprise Centre, a part of the Regional Municipality of York, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8h9","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-29 21:40:10","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/2022-08-25-04.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}