A Halifax social venture is giving youths the chance to participate in community development initiatives while enjoying a taste of entrepreneurship.

Launched in 2008, Hope Blooms works with teenagers in the city’s historically diverse North End to operate 10,000 square feet of organic food gardens and a commercial kitchen, which they use to produce and sell a roster of packaged goods products. The income associated with their work goes towards funding community development initiatives designed to benefit the same young people.

Earlier this month, a team from Hope Blooms won startup hub Tribe Network’s Youth Climate Pitch Competition for their plans to fund a mobile music studio powered by clean energy and built with income from selling an upmarket hot chocolate product.

“All of the enterprises have about five or six kids as groups,” said Kolade Boboye, Hope Blooms’ Creative Director of Youth Impact Business, who led the pitching delegation to Tribe. “I work with those groups of youth and help work out their idea, help with decision-making, creating design.

“They get to experience what it's like firsthand to have a business. How many 15-, 14-year-olds can be like, ‘I’ve been working on a business and learning from a business in real time?’”

Boboye originally joined Hope Blooms — itself founded by current Executive Director Jessie Jolymore — as a youth client. He participated in a pitch by Hope Blooms on the popular angel investing reality show Dragons' Den in 2013, which led to a $40,000 donation. Now he has rejoined the organization as one of its leaders, this time equipped with a business degree from St. Francis Xavier University.

The Hot Cocoa Boys, as the group working on the music studio have dubbed both themselves and their product, formed in 2021 and previously succeeded in fundraising to build a community basketball court. Other products produced by the Hope Blooms kids include salad dressings made from fresh herbs and looseleaf teas, with the income going toward a scholarship program that has given out more than $250,000 of funding.

“We’ve always been very actively working towards our campus being net zero,” said Boboye. 

Products from Hope Blooms are now sold in a range of retail outlets in Nova Scotia, including every Atlantic Superstore location in the province, and alumni have gone on to study at institutions as prestigious as Stanford and New York University. About 30 kids work on the social ventures year-round, and over 100 participate in summer programs.

The Hot Cocoa Boys, for their part, are more than halfway through raising the funds they need to build their sustainable music studio, and Boboye said he hopes to have construction finished in 2025 at the latest.

“It was one of those moments where, the time is now,” he said, recalling the team’s decision to pitch at Tribe. “Everything finally got to a point where our ideas and processes were finally ready to be out there.

“It’s a great opportunity and great learning experience for the youths, that they can see firsthand this cleantech being used.”