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 value of youth involvement in economic development.
Many youth between 9 and 18 attend youth entrepreneurship camps across Idaho. A variety of camp activities include hearing from local entrepreneurs, taking part in hands-on activities to discover their community, assessing their own skills, and creating a working 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 reality. Several community partnerships include Community Colleges, Public Schools, arias agency careers local 4-H Cooperative Extension, and native 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 be resourceful and taking pitfalls. The business teams are encouraged to carefully consider what their community needs, what they do well, and what interests them. The teams quickly become competitive about which the most creative and sometimes most outrageous business tips. Unfailingly, the adults who serve as judges for ail arias the final presentations are thankful for the creativity in the ideas, arias agencies jacksonville the excellence of the presentations, and the engagement of the students.
Many communities make the decision to select a template 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 along with the local community. Campers created businesses that reflected this heritage, including a tool that would help boats stuck on sand bars, and a nature center that would offer guided excursions. One student commented, “My favorite part was learning what it took to develop a business and run a checkbook.”
Many counties in western North Carolina are offering youth entrepreneurship camps to explain to youth leadership and problem solving training. Communities are beginning to understand the worth of partnerships and venture. 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 what composite materials are developed and investigated. They were able to handle and test materials such as the blast proof panels that protect U.S. troops. Through the theme camps students were encouraged to cleansing for health developing businesses that capitalize on the assets on their community.
Several counties operate together to give a regional youth entrepreneurship camp. Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College offers the Young Entrepreneurial Scholars (YES!) Camp for high-school students that year started a Middle School Academy Camp for Middle 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 really business idea may hope to are a real enterprise 1 day.
Many communities across North Carolina earning the decision incorporate youth entrepreneurship in their economic development schedule. Youth entrepreneurship camps build on the trend and teach tiny how to think like entrepreneurs and make a community that encourages entrepreneurship. Students find out entrepreneurship as an occupational option, and learn entrepreneurial skills likewise let benefit them whatever their career approach. Youth entrepreneurship plays a role in economic development as community leaders learn tangible ways to ensure it to part of their larger strategy. Entire regions will benefit through the advance of more businesses and a better trained work force.