About 70 people congregated at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax on Tuesday night to launch an initiative that will help young people to understand that entrepreneurship is a viable career option.

The Yes NS initiative — Yes stands for youth and entrepreneurship skills — has set up several working groups that will take various approaches to raising awareness of entrepreneurship.

“We started with an open-ended conversation on what can we attack to make a difference,” said Daniel Holland, executive vice-chairman and managing director at Beacon Securities and one of the founders of the group.

Yes NS grew from Holland and a few other businesspeople noticing a national poll last year that showed only 12.8 per cent of college students want to start their own businesses. With the One Nova Scotia commission calling for private-sector leadership, they decided to form a group to help encourage more people between the ages of 15 and 24 to understand the opportunities in entrepreneurship.

The group — which includes Nate Kroll, Bill MacAvoy, Matthew MacLellan, Chad Munro, David Regan, James Surette and David Thompson — wants not just to educate youth about opportunities but also let them know there’s a support network out there.

They set a few ground rules for themselves. Though they are all white men in their 40s, they wanted a broad representation of Nova Scotia society in the new program. They wanted it to apply to all sectors of the economy, not just information technology, which gets the most attention. The new program had to work across the whole province. And finally, they didn’t want to interfere with existing programs but to work with other groups in spreading the gospel of entrepreneurship.

“A lot of young people in Nova Scotia are not given the opportunity to understand what the options are in terms of entrepreneurship,” said Holland.

There’s a lot of hype around tech startups, but young people should be aware of opportunities in other sectors. They should also understand that the province is rife with aging business owners, and there are opportunities to enter these companies and grow them.

The people who showed up Tuesday represented the broader business community, including a lot of business founders. About a third were women, and 10 per cent were in their 20s.

Working groups were given the task of tossing around ideas on what could be done in seven areas: mentoring, financing, success, outreach, education, Corporate Challenge NS and 100 Entrepreneurs Who Give a Damn, modelled on the group 100 Men Who Give a Damn. Organizers had planned a contest for young entrepreneurs, but there was not a lot of enthusiasm for it.

Holland said most of the working groups made plans to move forward with their projects. Yes NS is focused on launching a few initiatives in September, when the school calendar begins, but some projects may take shape before then and begin working with young people across the province.

“I think we did a good job of doing something on a pan-Nova Scotia basis,” said Holland.