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 a value-driven, sustainable solution to a market opportunity. As students develop their ventures individually or in teams, they pitch to a panel of venture-capitalist-like judges and compete for seed funding that will help to make their idea a reality.
All students who complete the program and participate in the semi-finals become Youth CITIES Scholars and qualify for added benefits, such as summer internship opportunities. The top ventures, as judged during the semi-finals, move on to the finals. This year, Youth CITIES advanced 10 Finalists, and special recognition goes to the prize winners:
1st Place – $1500 in seed funding – MVM Ed (Motor Vehicle Maintenance) with Entrepreneur Samantha Glassner
2nd Place – $500 in seed funding – H.I. (Happiness Institute) with Entrepreneurs Maddie & Kaya Reingold
People’s Choice Award – Dual Pad with Entrepreneurs Andrew Holmes and Vara Mathiyalakan
Each of the winning ventures will receive the benefit of a hand-selected Advisory Board to help launch a prototype/pilot.
Youth CITIES will continue to track the progress of of our youth entrepreneurs and periodically report (via blog) on their progress, so check back soon to hear more about the Youth CITIES Scholars!!