🔗 Sandra's LinkedIn
🔗 Abdul's LinkedIn
🔗 Nicole's LinkedIn
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In 2019, Calgary released a document detailing an economic strategy for the city’s future. This report outlines that the post-secondary student-age population is declining relative to the Canadian average and lags other major cities [3]. This trend is linked to students not seeing many opportunities outside of the energy sector [6]. The energy sector dominates the workforce with big and small businesses, yet it is plagued with an unstable job market. The instability in the oil industry and it's prices plummeting multiple times in the last five years have caused massive economic consequences and affected the outlook on the industry, the city, and potential career growth [10].
<aside> ⚠️ If students continue leaving the city, it would become increasingly harder to replenish the talent pool when older workers start retiring. This impacts Calgary’s economic future because human capital is the key to unlocking long-term economic growth. Having skilled workers to support the digital migration of old companies and new technology-oriented ones is essential. In turn a diverse economy helps mitigate economic downturns [3].
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Heavily relying on a single industry and sector is risky and not sustainable for the city. The companies have a lot of influence on decision-making in city planning and play an essential factor in the city's growth and development [18]. The influence manifests itself by causing disproportionate visibility within the educational sphere, which influences students' opportunities such as internships. The energy sector overshadows some businesses that have the potential to reshape the job market in Calgary and limit the growth of those sectors and industries. One of the goals within the 2019 economic report is to promote a diverse workforce [3]. There are multiple initiatives within the city; which are working on promoting those sectors to meet the goal and expectations set by the report [12, 13, 14, 20, 21]. For example, multiple organizations have gone down the path of attempting to fund startups. Other organizations promote jobs in different sectors and offer workshops and internships that introduce new skills and interests to students and diversify the sectors. However, there remains a gap between the information students have access to and the available opportunities.
Within a sustainable community, individuals should receive equal opportunity to contribute to a workplace environment and sector that they believe to be meaningful to them [18]. This includes students who are just beginning their careers or are in the process of discovering different sectors. For example, suppose a student who is interning or working in the oil and gas industry is not satisfied in their career and considers the industry is dominating the job market. In that case, this causes the individuals to look for opportunities elsewhere or in other sectors. Since the city has contributed to making other options available, it is now time to find a way to bring those students opportunities. However, since many small businesses are still often related to the energy sector, this causes students not to gain the confidence they need in the workplace due to the potentially unstable industry. If the global or national economics can significantly harm the sector, then the small business would fail reasonably quickly as well. However, despite the influence of energy sector in small enterprises, it does not mean that the students will not be able to find interest or view their work as more meaningful to them; primarily because the sector or environment might allow them to work in a niche or sub-sector which they enjoy.
In order to bridge the information gap, we suggest building an online hub where this information can be readily available to students. The focus is on small businesses and students connecting with them. With this hub, the focus would be on students having a voice. This solution would create an expanding and encompassing effect on the information within the sector, industry, and businesses.
*"Giving voice to the voiceless" regularly signifies that the historically underrepresented, disadvantaged, or vulnerable gain opportunities to organize, increase visibility, and express themselves by leveraging the strengths of information, media, and communication technologies.
In summary, to prevent the younger generation from leaving Calgary for the lack of opportunities, an online collaborative platform can be developed to bridge the gap between the students and professionals from diverse industries. This will give them better access to information, opportunities, and internships and promote multiple other sectors to develop and advance due to continuous feedback.
First, we identify our key stakeholders: the students, startup companies, investors, and education institutions. The following infographic summarizes their relevant needs within the context of our problem statement.
