“Designed for middle school and high school students…participants work with a variety of entrepreneurs to start a venture, figure out how it impacts our local community, and determine how it’s going to make money while driving change.” The program started in Boston, and this is the first year it has taken place in St. Louis.
Here’s what Alex (‘16) had to say about his experience:
Over the past 10 weeks we have been been taking part in an innovation boot camp put on by Venture Cafe. It is an entrepreneurial camp that helps young people from 6th to 12th grade develop a business idea and work on a pitch for the idea. For the duration of the camp we learned about how being an entrepreneur works and how to improve our pitching and public speaking skills. Near the end of the camp we focused more on our pitches because at the end of the camp we had a competition and the winner received $1,500 to further develop our business. The way we were judged was based on a combination of different criteria, primarily how well we presented and how feasible and interesting our business idea was. The whole experience in the Bootcamp was actually very interesting. At first I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy it but as time went on and I made new friends I came to enjoy and really appreciate my time there. As a whole the Bootcamp was really enjoyable and I learned a lot about creating my own business; it also really helped me with my public speaking skills.
Thank you to Alex’s mother, Christina Green, at Cortex for spreading the word about this new opportunity to us at Crossroads. Check out the program at this site: Youth Programs