Kids’ Shield accessed Pocketed to avoid mindlessly scrolling through government websites — now they have an intern for 6-months and don’t pay a dime.
Dr. Maryam R. Aliabadi, the CEO and Co-Founder of Kids’ Shield, said one of the hardest parts of starting her business was establishing a Canadian team without having the money to do so. As an Iranian immigrant and a new business owner, this was a daunting task.
She said it’s critical for startups to secure money in the early stages and grow their team fast. So, a turning point for Kids’ Shield was when Dr. Aliabadi accessed Pocketed and secured her first grant.
“I can safely say one of the great and heartwarming things that happened to me was that I could secure the Career Launcher funding, introduced by Pocketed, which fully reimbursed an intern’s salary.”
Dr. Aliabadi started Kids’ Shield because of the increased amount of unsupervised time spent online by children, making them susceptible to phishing, scammers, cyberbullying, cyber predators, and identity thieves. She said a lot of these attacks can’t be stopped by a firewall because most cyber-attacks are from social engineering.
Kids’ Shield is all about cybersecurity education through game-based learning to make cyber awareness more attractive to kids.
At the beginning of Dr. Aliabadi’s business career, she tried to establish a team to work out of Iran, which is cheaper than a team working out of Canada. But, she soon realized that most funding wasn’t applicable to team members working internationally. So, she transferred all operations to Canada where salaries and expenses are proportionally higher.
For this reason, securing the Career Launcher Digital Tech Internship was a crucial steppingstone for her business.
Dr. Aliabadi was able to cover the salary of a full-time digital technology intern for 6 months — that’s 100% of the salary to be exact. Now, she hopes to continue to work with the employee in the future.
When Dr. Aliabadi first signed up for Pocketed six months ago, she noted that the platform’s GUI (graphical user interface) was very user-friendly.
She said she doesn’t always have the time or effort to endlessly browse government websites to see what grants are available.
“It [Pocketed] opened my eyes from the beginning to see what is available and what we are eligible for,” said Dr. Aliabadi.
Interested in learning more about grant programs like the Digital Tech Internship that Dr. Aliabadi successfully secured? Create your Pocketed account to see all the programs matched to your business profile.
