tjvagabond004's Journal

E360
A few weeks ago I was asked to sit on a panel for E360. It’s a program that helps students start their own businesses and gives them grants to help them get up and running. This is really closely related to my Youth Venture program (I focus on nonprofits and Clubs and they focus on businesses), so they asked me to help critique some business plans. I’ve been doing this kind of thing a lot lately so I didn’t really think much about it. Then I actually got to the panel. There where five other people on the panel and I was the only person that wasn’t either a CEO, Director or held a Ph.D. At first it was one of those ‘oh crap I should’ve prepared or worn something more then a T-shirt and jeans’ moments, but after the presentations started getting underway we all started getting into it and it was just really cool to see local entrepreneurs encouraging local youth to become active participants in their communities. None of them where as community focused as I would have like to see, but it was still impressive how seriously the students took their projects and how much thought and foresight went into the planning process. We gave out three grants and I’m working with another one of the teams to launch them as a Youth Venture. As frustrated as I feel with my job sometimes, it’s really encouraging to see something like this take place and know that there are kids who are more active then I was when I was in high-school.

For more info, below are two articles from the ProJo about the competition:

http://www.projo.com/business/content/BZ_MET_BUSINESS_PLAN_01-23-09_KAD1SA4_v13.34c3495.html

http://www.pbn.com/detail/39693.html

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