Let's Innovate through Education
Let's Innovate through Education empowers students of all backgrounds to launch social ideas to improve Memphis through a rigorous entrepreneurship curriculum, seed investment, and mentor matching.
Leader
Hardy Farrow
Location
5390 Mendehall Mall Memphis, TN 38115
About the project
Our program empowers high school students to launch social venture ideas to improve the city. We do this through an entrepreneurship curriculum that pushes students to engage with career skills like marketing, budgeting, research, etc. After going through our curriculum, we launch the best ideas through seed investment, mentor matching, and setting tangible goals. We want to launch 3 additional projects next year. Our hope is that our students will reach 100% of their goals they set via the $700 per project that is provided. Our key partners will be local schools.
The Steps
Our program starts with a 13 week curriculum in a classroom. After the 13 weeks, we take the best ideas and and launch them over a 6 month span. In order to achieve success, we need to make sure that our students are connected to the right people in the city and have the right resources to make a sustainable impact on their community.
Why we‘re doing it
We are launching this project because we truly believe that all students, regardless of where they live or how they grew up, deserve the opportunity to launch an idea that can impact their community. Our program seeks to solve two problems:
-the fact that many youth leave the city due to more opportunities in other cities (talent drain)
-the lack of workforce development due to certain skills not being cultivated (creative thinking, problem solving, etc).
Our goal is to empower youth across the city to start thinking about their community in a positive way by engaging with their passions. Through this engagement, we guide our youth to believe in their potential to change Memphis. Our ultimate goal is to change the way we think about innovation in classrooms.