Is your child a curious, innovative and ambitious student interested in technology and entrepreneurship? If so, he or she may want to apply to take part in a tech-entrepreneurship boot camp being held at the end of January.

UpstartED is a non-profit organization based in Montreal that will be running this weekend-long program at Lower Canada College in N.D.G. This organization aims to empower students to be creative problem solvers and ensures teachers and school leaders have the skills and tools to support them

During the weekend, teens will attend workshops and lectures, and showcase their skills in a competition. This year’s themes are ecommerce, retail and sustainability. On Friday evening, participants will be split into teams of five or six and assigned different roles that focus on sales, design, marketing, finance and product development. They will be given a surprise challenge and spend the weekend building a business model to solve it.

On Saturday, participants will attend role-specific workshops and lectures, create an ecommerce shop with Shopify and return to their teams to finish their business model. On Sunday, teams will pitch their solutions to a panel of investors, entrepreneurs and local experts and three teams will be chosen as the winners. Parents are welcome to attend the pitch session.

The winning teams will get to be part of the UpstartEd Incubator, a series of workshops which will take place after school from January to May. The workshops will teach them how to build a sustainable business and end with the launch of the business model they developed during the competition. Students will be mentored, coached, and have access to resources and companies like Google, Microsoft, Deloitte, IBM, and more.

Registration is open from Dec. 15 until Jan. 11 and the boot camp takes place from Jan. 25 to 27. Participants must be 12-18 and can fill out the application form online. The event is free, bilingual and open to all schools across the province.

Lower Canada College is located at 4090 Royal Ave.

For more information, visit upstarted.org/upgenbootcamp.