Ask any group of seasoned Canadian entrepreneurs just how far $100 would carry them in launching a company and the response would be the same: if they were lucky, it might cover the cost of a few hundred business cards.

That paltry sum would almost never provide enough capital to launch a profitable firm.

Or would it? Grade 12 students Jory Wong, Emily Chou and Elysia Gunn would certainly beg to differ.

The 17-year-old students of Burnaby North Secondary School in Burnaby, B.C., set out to disprove that notion when they entered the annual National Impact Microcredit Competition this year. The goal: taking a $100 microloan to found a small business and turn it into a successful enterprise in just 10 days, with all profits going to charity.

"I've always wanted to open some businesses," says Ms. Wong, an aspiring restaurateur and art gallery owner. "I always liked the idea of microloans because it's so easy to pay them back and you can get your foot in the door easily and get a business started."

Ms. Wong, a freelance photographer in her spare time, and her teammates managed to parlay creative ideas to sell art online, and stage a one-day event to resell vintage clothing, into a first-place finish in this year's competition.

Founded in 2008 by the non-profit Impact Entrepreneurship Group — a student-run organization dedicated to promoting youth entrepreneurship across Canada — this year's National Impact Microcredit Competition drew the participation of 80 high-school teams from across the country.

Participants are judged on a long list of criteria including business profitability, innovation, project sustainability, market need and reach, communication and leadership.

Ms. Wong's team built a website using free online software and used it to sell affordable original art work produced by students from their school as well as other local artists, while a one-day sale of pre-loved garments—largely old clothes destined for the dump, but instead purchased for just 50 cents per garbage bag from friends, family and other local community members—offered vintage clothing lovers a chance to fill a pillow case-sized bag of funky fashions for $10.

Both initiatives were a resounding success, grossing the team an impressive $4,500 in just 10 days, according to Ms. Wong. The students donated all proceeds to the international charity Action Against Hunger.

The team credits several factors for their success, including the use of free social media channels such as Facebook and YouTube to market their initiatives, while also reaching out to targeted markets, such as local 'hipster' types who don vintage duds as their de facto uniform, as well as thrifty consumers searching for affordable, original art.

Alex Shipillo, president of the Impact Entrepreneurship Group and one of the founders of the competition, says the idea to build a contest around microfinance came after he heard Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus speak on the topic at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Yunus is largely credited with developing the concept of microcredit and microfinance — incremental loans of as little as $10 given to entrepreneurs, mainly in developing countries, who are too poor to qualify for bank loans — as a vehicle to boost the sagging economic fortunes of people in the Third World.

Mr. Shipillo — a 21-year-old entrepreneur who was the recent recipient of the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award for social innovation — sought to leverage Dr. Yunus's model to teach other business-minded young Canadians about entrepreneurship and the impact that even small amounts of seed capital can have when combined with an innovative business model.

"One hundred dollars doesn't mean much in Canada, but I think what the true value is that it changes [students'] mindset towards entrepreneurship," Mr. Shipillo explains.

"The thing we want to get across is that microcredit is a really powerful tool for them to see how a small loan can create a lot of value in their communities, raise a lot of money for charity and also connect them with 100 other teams across the country that are learning the same lessons."

Ms. Wong says the competition taught her team a great deal about the fundamentals of business, ranging from cash flow management to inventory control, but points out that two factors may have ultimately decided their first-place ranking. "We can attribute most of our success to just being creative and working really hard," she says.

Mitchell Schinbein, the Impact Entrepreneurship Group's 17-year-old chairperson and a past participant in the competition, feels Canadian youth would benefit not only from hearing more success stories, such as that of the team from Burnaby North Secondary, but also from a greater system-wide focus on teaching the principles of business innovation, development and management.

"I think there's a big gap in the education system right now in terms of promoting entrepreneurship, as well as financial literacy," the Guelph, Ont.-based Grade 11 student explains. "I think there should be a course where you actually have to run a business venture."

While he acknowledges that may be a long time coming, in the meantime, initiatives such as the Impact competition can fill that gap and teach students about what he feels is the most important aspect of entrepreneurialism.

"It's not necessarily just about starting a business to make money," he says, "but creating something of value for your customers. Money is just the by-product."

(From the editor: You may also be interested in the piece about university student entrepreneurs generating millions of dollars.)