Halifax’s Tidal Venture Partners has pledged to donate a portion of its profits to the Discovery Centre science museum, also in Halifax, in a move that looks to be aimed at least partly at increasing the talent pipeline for STEM jobs in Atlantic Canada.
The Discovery Centre mostly offers educational programming for children, and a frequent refrain from innovation economy observers is that the current shortage of skilled labour has its roots partly in a lack of recruitment efforts targeted at young people.
Research from Purdue University, among similar studies by other institutions, has suggested that exposure to science, technology, engineering or math-related topics in early childhood dramatically increases kids’ likelihood of choosing technical careers.
“There are two themes that are very prominent at Tidal; conviction capital, which means investing early in founders and founding teams; and transformative capital — capital that can have transformative effects not only for the companies that we invest in but also transformative for our communities,” said Managing Parter Ian Whytock in a statement.
“We hope this partnership with Discovery Centre will build their capacity to continue to deliver positive community impact.”
Tidal’s recent investments include New York- and Halifax-based education technology startup Pressto and Halifax’s Bright Breaks, which sells subscriptions for online fitness and wellness classes targeted at businesses looking to help their employees get active