Montreal REALTOR® Partners Up to Create Foundation Focused on Teaching Youth Valuable Lessons  

Real estate has elevated the life of Mactar Mbaye, a Montreal area REALTOR® with Groupe Mbaye of eXp Agence immobilière Québec. In the spirit of giving back, he and two other professionals created a foundation that offers free real estate, investment, and life-skills programming to local youth through a mix of face-to-face and online segments, starting with an understanding of how their personal passions can intersect with business to benefit the greater world.

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“I had a thought, what if I had had this information for real estate much earlier in my life?” says Mbaye, who launched the Youth Rising Estate Foundation with boxing light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal and developer Thierry Joubert. “I come from a challenged background and that’s part of why I want to give back with what I’ve learned, so that others can live their dreams.”

Mbaye, now 31, recalls sitting on the steps leading into his parents’ house basement in Laval, Quebec, when he was a pre-teen and part of a family of nine—the only one fascinated by the renovation that was going on to create rooms in the home. He loved the smell of the wood being cut, the busyness of the construction workers and the way the property was being transformed. He thought, I’d love to be able to do this.

“Everything I have is because of real estate,” says the HGTV Canada’s Hoarder House Flipper star. “We want to make a difference in the lives of young people by showing them the potential of real estate, as well as real-life skills that they can learn to move their lives forward.”

The goal of the Montreal-based foundation is to allow youths coming from all walks of life and backgrounds to rise to their potential.

The three business partners decided that the knowledge and skills they want to teach youth, such as learning about the importance of credit, mortgage financing and building a pathway to self-sustaining finance, are not readily available in the traditional school system, particularly in anything lower than post-secondary. Topics being taught include cash flow for different types of investments, abundance, leadership, negotiations and how to direct your energy.

“I wish that I had access to this kind of information and training early on in my life because I’ve had to build it through experience,” says Mbaye. “The foundation can give the kids a head start. They will be able to do the right things earlier in their lives, such as knowing how to put money aside and how to build toward buying real estate.”

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To get funding for the foundation, the trio raised $32,000 in August of 2023 by hosting a luxury event in the Montreal area featuring a DJ and silent auction on a private island. Their ‘The Cruise Estate’ event drew 170 people and raised enough to launch their first cohort of 10 students ranging in age from 14 to 21 who the trio expect will complete the training in April of 2024.

“If they have a dream, they know they can do it because we have done it,” says Mbaye. “They just need help at an earlier age than when I got started.” Both the foundation, and its recipients, look forward to bright futures, with plans to add workshops so that more youth can benefit and along with applying for officially charitable status as well as beginning to collaborate with other foundations in Quebec.