What is a Practice Firm?A Practice Firm is a simulated company set up by trainees, with the assistance of a facilitator, to undertake commercial activities. It provides the trainees with hands-on business skills while enhancing their knowledge and experience of business practices. The trainees continue to lead active job searches while operating the Practice Firm.

Working in the proposed Perth-Huron Practice Firm will provide different types of learners with the skills and knowledge to become either an entrepreneur or to find employment. The Practice Firm will foster entrepreneurial attitudes and skills among young people from a range of backgrounds (unemployed graduates, laid-off employees, women returning to work, and youth with disabilities). The youth participants will also learn how to work in a team, to take on responsibility, to develop self-initiative and to improve their soft, professional and technical skills.

Training and job search support will be provided by subject matter experts both within and without the Practice Firm, including the Centre for Employment & Learning and Avonova (local organization of information and digital media technology experts). The proposed Practice Firm will be modelled on the operations of a technology and communications retail company with a specific sensitivity to rural conditions. Practice Firms exist in many urban centres, but rural models are rare.

Why a Practice Firm?The City of Stratford and associated Stratford organizations and companies have worked over the past three years to establish a local University of Waterloo Campus. The Stratford Institute opened with its first thirty-five students (Master’s level) in September 2010. The Institute is focussing on digital media studies. This focus is an excellent complement to the recently established $3.4 million Stratford Media Arts Centre and the new Digital Media Incubation Centre for business start-ups – as well as the proposed Practice Firm.

Youth in rural Ontario cannot rely on others to create the economic opportunities needed to provide employment. Instead, Stratford youth – followed by Perth & Huron County youth - will lead the development of an innovative entrepreneurial culture that will focus on the opportunities offered by digital technology. They will ‘work locally but in a global marketplace’.

Economic Opportunities for Youth –The Vision