That's a great question, Ms. Young. Thank you very much.
I love to hear those kinds of stories, like the one about your father. I hear similar stories everywhere I go. It's wonderful to hear and see the uptake.
You're right. It is a complete myth. The number one consumer group using smart phones in terms of increasing sales are those over 65. Technology is becoming more pervasive.
In terms of getting young people involved, actually, we're not seeing an issue. We're seeing an issue in trying to accommodate the number of young people who wish to get involved in this area.
That's what Age-Well has been doing. Age-Well has a very extensive training program, where we train current masters, Ph.D.s and undergraduate students in the area of age tech. In our first seven years as a network, we have put over 1,000 trainees through that program.
Many of them are not academics anymore. Many of them are doing their own start-up companies. Many of them are working in industry. Many of them are working in policy in government. Age-Well, alone, in the first six years has supported 46 start-up companies in this area, many of which are actually starting to make a little bit of money, which is always wonderful to see.
This is where we need to support things. We need to support the age tech sector to continue to grow. We need to encourage these young Canadians who are coming out of areas such as computer science and artificial intelligence. We are presenting really challenging and interesting problems for them to solve, and that's really what hooks them.
We need the support for our start-ups in the area of age tech, but also the support of well-established industries and companies that realize their number one consumer will become older as well, to help them make that transition into the area to learn about the age tech sector and, more importantly, to learn about seniors themselves.