Going global with the G20 YEA Summit

In January, while attending the monthly board meeting for the local networking organization SYPE (Saskatchewan Young Professional and Entrepreneurs), Stephanie Yong, the Director at the W. Brett Wilson Centre for Entrepreneurial Excellence, brought to light an event for entrepreneurs the SYPE community may have interest in. The event in question was the 2013 G20 YEA Summit in Moscow Russia. The summit is an annual affair first organized by the CYBF (Canadian Youth Business Foundation) with the general aim of incorporating entrepreneurship into the official G20 process, the official G20 YEA charter can be found here: G20 YEA Charter. Needless to say, the Canadian Delegation for the summit was still taking application at the moment I had found out about it, and what harm could come from applying right?

A few months later I received an email from the Canadian G20 YEA official representative asking me to attend the event. I was and still am honored to have been selected, and promptly dove head first into the process of discovering more of what I had got myself into and began preparation for the event. Much of what followed consisted finding out what the G20 YEA summit was all about via countless email correspondences and conference calls amongst organizers and delegates, surveys and questionnaires seeking insight into the entrepreneurial landscape in canada, Russian visa applications and of course the typical travel preparations. It was a very exciting experience to be headed to an event of this scope with the aim of representing Canadian and Saskatchewan entrepreneurs on the international stage, learning from the experiences of fellow Canadian and international delegates, discovering great ideas to bring back home from the tenured speakers and officials at the event and of course to do my part in helping shape the role of the entrepreneur in the global economic landscape.

Pretty cool stuff!

The event went by very quickly, it was a blitzkrieg of idea shaping and networking amongst some 400 or so jet lagged individuals ranging from software startups to biotechnology innovators to small business owners. The spectrum of representation was quite large and very diverse. Even with such diversity the issues raised by the various delegates seemed to follow eerily similar subject streams. Common issues of discussion were entrepreneurial education, access to information surrounding business startup, access to funding and the growing youth unemployment epidemic. After the event, Ernst & Young, in an effort to help the leaders of the G20 and the global economy benchmark their progress and performance in the realm of entrepreneurship, gathered together all the information from all the pre-summit communications, summit events and post-summit debriefing to put together the EY G20 Entrepreneurship Barometer. The full report can be viewed here: 2013 EY G20 Barometer. Generally speaking, the report lays out a series of recommendations for the G20 leaders surrounding five major categories:

  • Access to funding.
  • Entrepreneurship Culture
  • Tax and regulation
  • Education and training
  • Coordinated support

The 2013 EY G20 Barometer, working together with the 2013 G20 YEA Summit I attended in Moscow this past June, aims to provide the upcoming G20 Leaders Summit with a clear insight into the successes and short comings in the entrepreneurial community, that communities effect on the broader G20 economic landscape and the global economy as a whole. The G20 Leaders summit takes place September 5-6th 2013 in St. Petersburg Russia, lets keep our fingers crossed the efforts of the G20 YEA Summit and the 2013 EY G20 Barometer make a difference!


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