Venn Innovation Inc. and Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge have entered a multi-year partnership to provide more opportunities for New Brunswick’s future entrepreneurs.

Under the partnership announced this month, Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge will establish an office in Moncton’s Venn Centre and develop several initiatives to promote youth entrepreneurship.

Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, or YEC, is an annual competition organized in conjunction with schools and communities that supports entrepreneurial projects headed by youth.  The program aims to help fulfill teachers’ curriculum and teach students necessary skills through an annual entrepreneurship competition. YEC hopes that this partnership will expand its ability to impact more students, and and create more startups.

The 2016 Gala for the competition will be help May 18 at the Crown Plaza in Moncton.

“We are very excited about the possibilities this partnership presents for the Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge,” said YEC Executive Director Sarah Short. “Our partnership with Venn will provide a natural connection between our programs for youth and the entrepreneurship development that is taking place through Venn’s programs and services for entrepreneurs.”

Venn Innovation was founded in 2010 to support innovation-based economic development by a collective of technology entrepreneurs. Today, Venn helps New Brunswick tech start-ups sustain and grow their businesses. Through the partnering with YEC, it hopes to bring services to the younger generation of innovators.

“This partnership is a natural progression for us,” said Venn Innovation President and CEO Doug Robertson. “Our Vennture Garage program helped create 15 new start-ups in its first year of operations in Moncton and we take great pride in noting that one of those companies was the winning team from the 2015 Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge.”

The partnership is effective immediately and more details on the 2016 YEC as well as future initiatives will be announced in the coming weeks. YEC is open to people from kindergarten through age 35.