Onwards & Upwards: Virtual Ventures Wins Actua Award for Excellence

This year, Carleton University’s award-winning social impact organization Virtual Ventures (VV) was named winner of the Actua 2024 Award for Excellence.

The Actua Award for Excellence recognizes network members who exemplify annual excellence in unlocking potential for youth and removing barriers in STEM.

Actua serves as Canada’s largest STEM outreach organization, providing youth with transformative learning experiences through its national network of 45 universities and colleges. The network members collectively engage with over 375,000 youth in 600 communities across the country, providing STEM experiences that build critical skills and actively break down barriers to Canada’s STEM culture.

As one of the Actua network members, Virtual Ventures is an award-winning social impact organization run through Carleton’s Faculty of Engineering and Design, creating opportunities for youth from junior kindergarten to Grade 12 to engage with STEM in an exciting and impactful way. VV offers specialty summer camps, after-school clubs, in-school workshops, on-campus events, and community programs.

Kyra Bloomfield, Youth Outreach Coordinator and Program Director of Virtual Ventures, said it was an honour to receive this award from Canada’s leading STEM youth outreach organization. VV being recognized was a testament to the entire team’s hard work, passion, and dedication to continually push the boundaries of innovation and impact among youth.

“This is the perfect year for us to receive this award, because we celebrated our 30^th anniversary of doing excellent work,” said Bloomfield. “We’re still growing, we’re still improving, and we’re always making sure our programs are high quality.”

Last year, VV celebrated its 30th anniversary of STEM outreach with a record-breaking year reaching 22,000 youth participants. With this milestone, the team has more than doubled its reach within two years, from 10,000 youth in 2022 and 15,000 in 2023.

The culmination of VV’s big year took place at the Delta Hotel in downtown Ottawa on Jan. 22 for Actua’s National Conference. The annual event is a chance for Actua network members to gather and celebrate the past year, share stories and best practices, and for the whole network to kick off the new year of STEM learning experiences.

“For 30 years, Virtual Ventures has done an amazing job delivering hands-on programming across the Ottawa region and beyond including working with Indigenous youth and youth facing socio-economic challenges, making sure that we have a robust and diverse workforce in the future,” said Actua CEO Jennifer Flanagan.

Improving, Expanding Programs

On top of their thriving youth enrollment, VV made strides in 2024 to make existing programs even more accessible and to offer specialty workshops to even more communities.

In 2024, they launched the new Black Youth in STEM program. Partnering with the Black Entrepreneurship Knowledge Hub at the Sprott School of Business, the Ottawa Catholic School Board’s Graduation Coaches for Black Students, BGC Ottawa and Shopify, VV was able to create a program to show youth the opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship in STEM industry mentors, role models, and partnerships are the core of this program.

“This kind of program shows youth that you can be an engineer and work in the industry, but you can also start your own company,” said Bloomfield. “We hope this empowers them to see that potential and really see themselves as leaders and as innovators.”

In 2024, VV launched a Summer Community Outreach Program, bringing hands-on STEM experiences to other youth-serving organizations including BGC Ottawa, rural Ottawa Public Library branches, and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. Other achievements the addition of another full-time staff member, Assistant Director Halle Blowes, who added stability and sustainability to their work.

Blowes was integral in making those connections for the Black Youth in STEM program and the Summer Community Outreach program.

“We want to make sure we’re being as sustainable as we can be, and creating those meaningful and genuine connections allows us to continue to work with all our partners year after year,” said Bloomfield.

Retaining and Training Staff

Just as important as keeping youth participants engaged is keeping their instructors coming back year after year.

“We asked ourselves, ‘how can we make the experience of our instructors really memorable?’” said Bloomfield. “How can we make it so they’re really involved and they’re really taken care of?”

In 2024, VV created 70 jobs for university students, including Carleton students from the Faculty of Engineering and Design and the Faculty of Science, as well as teaching candidates from different universities that come to Ottawa for summer jobs. “We’re very proud that our instructors come back semester after semester,” said Bloomfield. “Instructors are the heart of our organization, they’re the ones providing those safe spaces for the kids.”

Recently, Actua also began highlighting the efforts and work of their members’ instructors. From over 1,000 instructors across Canada, they choose three who are recognized for their hard work and given a scholarship presented by RBC Future Launch.

At the National Conference, the Instructor Recognition Award was awarded to VV’s own Julie Delorme.

“Julie is the best,” said Bloomfield. “She’s very much a leader in the team. She’s very positive. She’s always looking to problem solve, to make the youth feel welcome, to think one step ahead.”

The Actua National Conference included other honours for Carleton’s Outreach team: Bloomfield herself was presented with the Long-Term Leadership Recognition for her five-year anniversary on the Director Team.

As they look to the future, VV’s team aims to continue to guide young Canadians into STEM careers and empower them to be innovators and change-makers in their communities.

“We’re still holding true to what Virtual Ventures was when it first started, focusing on meaningful experiences and cutting-edge technology”, said Bloomfield. “Thirty years ago, we were introducing youth to websites, now we are discussing artificial intelligence. We’re sticking to the themes while staying with the times, to cover what’s relevant and what youth will need to know.

“I feel like we accomplished so much in 2024 and we’re still looking to be bigger and better.”

Monday, February 3, 2025 in Feature Stories, Youth Outreach
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