Enhancing Economic Development Through Youth Entrepreneurship Camps
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. Information 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 Vermont. A variety of camp activities include hearing from local entrepreneurs, starting hands-on activities to discover their community, assessing their own skills, and creating a legitimate american income life opportunity 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, arias agencies canonsburg 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 faculty environment.
From the very beginning, camp participants are encouraged to “think like an entrepreneur” by being creative and taking perils. The business teams are encouraged to think on what their community needs, ail what perform well, and what interests them. The teams quickly become competitive about in which has the most creative and sometimes most outrageous business ideas. Unfailingly, the adults who serve as judges for the final presentations are thankful for the creativity with the ideas, the excellence of the presentations, and the engagement of students.
Many communities choose to select a pattern for their entrepreneurship camp and encourage students to develop a business around the theme. One theme camp was delivered by a partnership that included Carteret Community College and 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, rrncluding a nature center that would offer guided tours. One student commented, “My favorite part was learning what it took to create a business and manage a checkbook.”
Many counties in western North Carolina are offering youth entrepreneurship camps to explain to youth leadership and problem solving skills. Communities are beginning to understand the importance 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 learned on how composite materials are developed and investigated. They were able to handle and test materials such the blast proof panels that protect Ough.S. troops. Through the theme camps students were encouraged to ponder developing businesses that capitalize on the assets on their community.
Several counties are working together to offer a regional youth entrepreneurship camp. Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College offers the Young Entrepreneurial Scholars (YES!) Camp for high-school students and this 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 go into the camp with really business idea that hope to become a real enterprise one day.
Many communities across North Carolina earning the decision incorporate youth entrepreneurship within economic development strategy. Youth entrepreneurship camps build on the trend and teach tiny how to think like entrepreneurs and make a community that encourages entrepreneurship. Students learn about entrepreneurship as a career option, and learn entrepreneurial skills that can benefit them whatever their career approach. Youth entrepreneurship plays a role in economic development as community leaders learn tangible ways to become a success part of their larger strategy. Entire regions will benefit through the production of more businesses nicely better trained staff.
