Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Los Angeles (NFTE LA)

NFTE currently serves over 2,108 LAUSD students per year. NFTE has the opportunity to deepen our current partnership with the LAUSD by integrating NFTE’s entrepreneurship curriculum with all high school economic classes across all regions, with the potential to reach 30,000+ students and work with over 200 teachers over the next 3 years. Grant would support phase 1 to expand into 12 economics high school teachers across the LAUSD regions. Through the phase 1 expansion, NFTE LA will reach 2,000+ additional LAUSD students within the first year.

NFTE Greater LA proposes to expand our program enrollment to reach additional youth in the Los Angeles community. We also propose to build a pathway and continuum of support between our current program offerings: Exploring Careers (middle school), Startup Tech (middle school app development program), Entrepreneurship (high school), Startup Summer (alumni accelerator) and Alumni Programming that addresses the NFTE alumni ongoing needs for support in their business, career and education goals.

Together with our partners, NFTE Greater Los Angeles proposes to address youth unemployment in the African American and Latino communities, by creating a youth entrepreneurship and innovation conference for 300 youth, to be held at USC in partnership with USC Marshall’s Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. The event will reach under-served Los Angeles teens with the goal of promoting youth entrepreneurship in the face of high unemployment rates for African American and Latino youth in low-income neighborhoods. The conference will be held on Innovation Saturday in Fall 2013 in tandem with NFTE’s World Series of Innovation, a competition designed to challenge teens to solve real-world business problems posed by companies like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, JC Penney, Sean John, and others. Students who attend the conference will participate in sessions led by diverse LA entrepreneurs who will share the entrepreneurial lessons they have learned. Youth will also work with a team of established entrepreneurs and their fellow teens to launch a project to submit to the World Series of Innovation. Featured conference speakers will include young African American and Latino entrepreneurs and innovators in Los Angeles, introducing under-served LA youth to the growing community of diverse innovators in Los Angeles shaping the business climate in LA. The stories shared by entrepreneurs at this event will be documented on video, and shared with the broader Los Angeles community through a web-based library of entrepreneurial stories, in the model of Ted talks, thus affecting the wider LA community of youth seeking economic opportunities. This project can impact the income and employment outlook for these youth by introducing them to an alternative vision for generating income to support their life goals, inspiring them with the stories of entrepreneurs who reflect their communities, and sharing resources that can assist them on an entrepreneurial path.