Chris Blackwood uses entrepreneurial experience to mentor at-risk youth

According to Blackwood, SSE-O helped him mold his idea into a more “presentable” and “perfected” mechanism, complete with a social model and a curriculum. After graduation, Blackwood had inaugurated an organization called Helping Neighbourhoods Implement Change Through Mentoring, which took the two Gentleman Hats and Prettier than Pink clubs under its wing.

Blackwood isn’t the only one to have noticed his improvement over the course of his SSE-O studies. Brown has seen Blackwood’s entrepreneurial skills drastically improve over the duration of the eight-month course.

[pullquote]“When I first met Chris, he was just a young man who was passionate about what he wanted to do,” Brown explains. “[Now], he’s learned the necessary tools to bring him to the next plateau.”[/pullquote]

Mostly, according to Brown, Blackwood learned how to be a successful businessman and an able people-person.

For Blackwood, half the success of a social entrepreneur has to do with “having a great team.” Part of Blackwood’s appreciation for the SSE-O stems from the many useful connections that he was able to make through the school.

Blackwood’s social entrepreneurship “success story of the moment” comes from one of those connections.

His strong belief in “stories of change” led Blackwood to start hosting professional development forums, introducing youth to successful guest speakers who come from at-risk communities. These were originally held at the Black Creek Community Health Centre once a month.

“Then we had a guest speaker at SSE-O… Jeff Dennis… I guess he found what I was doing kind of interesting, and he’s a golf member at the Oakdale Golf & Country Club, so he made the connection for me to have a meeting with the general manager,” Blackwood explains.

A meeting turned into another meeting, and soon, Blackwood began to host his professional development forums at the golf club. “Now I have youth that [have] never been to a golf club ever actually coming in to a golf club, dressed up formally and listening to guest speakers, in such a prestigious place… Hopefully that can shape their mentality to do better.”

Blackwood’s mentorship programs do seem to be working. Though his programs started less than two years ago, he has already become a prominent leader for several youth.

Harpreet Gill, a 25-year-old woman who was raised in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto, was one of the first members of Blackwood’s Prettier Than Pink program.

Gill asserts that her involvement with the program since 2011 has helped her with several different aspects of her life, from professional to personal, and guided her to return to Ryerson University, where she just finished the second year of her social work degree.

“[Blackwood] is doing a whole lot of different things that I haven’t seen in a really long time in our community,” says Gill. “…His whole goal with this mentorship program is for underprivileged youth to have the same experience as upper and middle class youth. He’s done a tremendous job.”