Students Across U.S. to Get Summer Entrepreneurship Training

Young people will receive hands-on entrepreneurship training this summer through “Make Your Job,” a new collaboration between the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship and the Citi Foundation.

Make Your Job is a component of the Citi Foundation's new Pathways to Progress initiative, a three-year, $50 million commitment to unlock economic opportunity for 100,000 low-income youth across the United States. NFTE will offer three expanded entrepreneurship training programs, enabling young people in 10 communities to make their own summer jobs.

The program includes the following:

• BizCamps: A compressed, intense version of the NFTE in-classroom entrepreneurship education which teaches entrepreneurship thinking and business skills. The 18 camps will serve young people in New York City, Newark, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Bridgeport (CT), Miami, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.
• Startup Summer: A business accelerator program which will be open to young people who have already completed NFTE’s core entrepreneurship program either in their classroom or through a BizCamp®. Participants are led through all aspects of creating their business and given seed capital to start operations. Startup Summer also acts as a summer job for the participants, as they are paid to participate. The program will serve young people from New York City and Los Angeles.
• MakeYourJob.org: A youth-centered Web community that converts key aspects of NFTE’s entrepreneurship program into interactive game play and rewards-based experiences that demonstrate how to turn one’s hobby or interest into a business. The community brings the power of entrepreneurship to tens of thousands of young people across the country.

“The entrepreneurial mindset is a powerful tool, and it can be taught,” Amy Rosen, NFTE’s president and CEO, said. “When young people see that they can use math to calculate business profits and use creative writing in marketing, they get it—and they engage with school and begin to take full ownership of their future.”

Having a summer job can be an important building block to career success, but research shows that summer employment options are declining. Recent trends demonstrate that young people from more affluent families are more likely to take summer employment—leaving fewer options for young people from low-income families.

Make Your Job is different from many other summer employment programs because it will train, motivate and encourage young people to find summer employment through innovation and entrepreneurship.

“A summer job is about more than pizza money—it gives young people the chance to learn new skills and discover their talents,” said Daymond John, founder of FUBU clothing and celebrity entrepreneur on ABC’s “Shark Tank.” “Showing young people that they can make their own summer jobs—wherever they are—is important and a great way to give young people a jump on entrepreneurship.”

Article by Ted Glanzer, EducationWorld Contributor
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