CORE Corner

Congratulations to the Youth CITIES March-to-May Bootcamp Class of 2013!! The March-to-May Bootcamp is Youth CITIES' flagship program and designed for middle school and high school students from diverse backgrounds. The students work with real-world executives to brainstorm different ideas to start a venture with social impact for their community. Youth CITIES partners with prominent executives from the business and nonprofit communities who teach fundamentals of leadership, entrepreneurship, presentation skills, and business plan creation. These professionals also share strategies for leveraging business principles to drive change in society. The rigorous 10-week bootcamp inspires, educates, and equips youth to take action and make a difference. Youth CITIES moves beyond the academics of business, to framing real-life problems, real-life constraints, and real-life success criteria as the launch pad for students to create…

Last weekend, winter storm Nemo dumped more than 2 feet of snow on most of New England. In some places, high winds led to drifts piling 5 feet or higher. We all saw the fresh white landscape. We all dealt with the snow. Some of us are still dealing with it. What does any of it have to do with Youth CITIES? On Saturday morning, while I was shoveling out my car (see pic;-), I was telling my wife about the snow storms I experienced growing up in the ‘90s. (My wife is from Jamaica; and, although, she’s lived in the US for 8 years, this was her first official blizzard.) I recounted stories of my two younger brothers and I traversing the neighborhood like it was a frozen tundra…

Last September, Youth CITIES participated in an open-source philanthropy event sponsored by TUGG (Technology Underwriting the Greater Good). For the event, our Founder, Vicky, spent the evening networking with hundreds of Greater Boston's entrepreneurs and technology professionals to tell them the story of Youth CITIES. Then, at the end of the night, attendees had to choose from among a handful of worthy social-enterprise ventures (like Youth CITIES) and vote for which organization would receive some grant funding. Youth CITIES is a great program, obviously, and Vicky did a terrific job of sharing her vision with everyone she met that night, including me. From that event, Youth CITIES won a small but valuable grant from TUGG, and the funds are committed to this year's March-to-May Bootcamp. Coming up, on January 31st,…