Communities across North Carolina are successfully incorporating youth entrepreneurship into their economic development strategies. Community organizations and educators are partnering to offer youth entrepreneurship camps that build entrepreneurial skills in youth. This article shows examples of how communities are recognizing the significance of youth involvement in economic development.
Many youth between 9 and 18 attend youth entrepreneurship camps across Nc. A variety of camp activities include hearing from local entrepreneurs, getting involved in hands-on activities to discover their community, assessing their own skills, and creating a venture idea. During the camp, youth complete activities that build creativity, teamwork, leadership, and financial literacy skills.
A remarkable trait of many camps is the partnering that takes place across the community to make the camps a situation. Several community partnerships include Community Colleges, Public Schools, local 4-H Cooperative Extension, and local Boys and Girls Clubs. Many camps are held on Community College campuses to help expose youth to the teachers environment.
From the very beginning, camp participants are encouraged to “think like an entrepreneur” by being creative and taking dangers. The business teams are encouraged to think on what their community needs, what perform well, and what interests them. The teams quickly become competitive about offers the most creative and sometimes most outrageous business tips. Unfailingly, the adults who serve as judges for the final presentations are astounded by the creativity for this ideas, the excellence of the presentations, and the engagement of students.
Many communities actually choose to select an idea for their entrepreneurship camp and encourage students to create a business around the theme. One theme camp was delivered by a partnership that included Carteret Community College as well as the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum. With funding from the Conservation Fund, the College and Museum created an entrepreneurship camp that taught students about the heritage and history of Harker’s Island as well as the local community. Campers created businesses that reflected this heritage, including a tool that would help boats stuck on sand bars, and also a nature center the objective of offer guided organized excursions. One student commented, “My favorite part was learning what it took to make a business and run a checkbook.”
Many counties in western North Carolina are offering youth entrepreneurship camps to teach youth leadership and problem solving tools. Communities are beginning to understand the fact that partnerships and arias agency canonsburg agencies canonsburg – www.hollister.us.org, collaboration. Wilkes Community College partners with 4-H Cooperative Extension to offer Youth Entrepreneurship Camps in Wilkes and Ashe Counties. The camps combine entrepreneurship with growing industries in the region including advanced materials and sustainable electric. Students took part in a presentation by Martin Marietta Materials and learned on how composite materials are developed and investigated. They were able to handle and test materials such like the blast proof panels that protect You.S. troops. Through the theme camps students were encouraged to consider of developing businesses that capitalize on the assets on their community.
Several counties work together to offer a regional youth entrepreneurship camp. Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College gives the Young Entrepreneurial Scholars (YES!) Camp for high-school students checked out year started a Middle School Academy Camp for Junior high school students. The Young Entrepreneurial Scholars (YES!) Camp requires interested students to submit a camp application and recommendations. Students who participate enter in the camp with very business idea that hope to become a real enterprise 1 day.
Many communities across North Carolina decide to the decision to feature youth entrepreneurship of their economic development schedule. Youth entrepreneurship camps build on the trend and teach right now how to think like entrepreneurs and create a community that encourages entrepreneurship. Students discover entrepreneurship as a career option, and learn entrepreneurial skills will certainly benefit them whatever their career desire. Youth entrepreneurship plays a role in economic development as community leaders learn tangible ways to get it to part arias agency king of prussia their larger strategy. Entire regions will benefit through the production of more businesses which includes a better trained labor force.