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 N . c .. A variety of camp activities include hearing from local entrepreneurs, taking part in hands-on activities to learn about 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 case. Several community partnerships include Community Colleges, Public Schools, local 4-H Cooperative Extension, arias agencies canonsburg 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 show creativity and taking issues. The business teams are encouraged to carefully consider what their community needs, what they well, and what interests them. The teams quickly become competitive about which the most creative and sometimes most outrageous business solutions. Unfailingly, the adults who serve as judges for the final presentations are astounded by the creativity of your ideas, the company’s presentations, and the engagement of the scholars.
Many communities actually choose to select a theme for their entrepreneurship camp and encourage students to generate a business around the theme. One theme camp was delivered by a partnership that included Carteret Community College and also 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 and also the local community. Campers created businesses that reflected this heritage, including a tool that would help boats stuck on sand bars, in addition to a nature center not merely offer guided organized 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 train youth leadership and problem solving skill set. Communities are beginning to understand the great need of partnerships and effort. 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 electrical. Students took part in a presentation by Martin Marietta Materials and arias agencies canonsburg learned concerning how composite materials are developed and assessed. They were able to handle and test materials such the blast proof panels that protect Oughout.S. troops. Through the theme camps students were encouraged to reflect on developing businesses that capitalize on the assets on their community.
Several counties function together to give a regional youth entrepreneurship camp. Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College supplies Young Entrepreneurial Scholars (YES!) Camp for ail high-school students that also 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 into the camp with really business idea may hope to are a real enterprise one day.
Many communities across North Carolina are making the decision incorporate youth entrepreneurship his or her economic development method. Youth entrepreneurship camps build on the trend and teach right now how to think like entrepreneurs and create a community that encourages entrepreneurship. Students check out entrepreneurship as a profession option, and learn entrepreneurial skills that may benefit them whatever their career idea. Youth entrepreneurship plays a role in economic development as community leaders learn tangible ways to render it part of their larger strategy. Entire regions will benefit through the coming of more businesses too better trained employed pool.