Wilmington Mayor John Carney looks to launch a youth entrepreneur program for city teens.
The pilot program, if approved by Wilmington City Council, would run for six to eight weeks for teens between 14 and 17 years old.
Melody Phillips is the acting director for the Wilmington Parks and Recreation department. She says the business development program would be either after school or in the summer.
"This way, we have an opportunity to have workshops that are built upon one another,” said Phillips. “So if one week we're talking about your personal brand then the next week we'll be talking about how you market your personal brand, and how you increase your social media presence. Where the next week we then will say, okay, how do you incorporate that into your business strategy and your business plan and helping for youth understand what that business model and plan is."
There will also be guest speakers from local business owners in the city, and then participants would pitch their ideas to their peers and those business owners.
The hope is those with the best pitches would get a monetary prize, dependent on City Council approval.
"And the reason why we really wanted to do this is because we have a significant amount of young people that participate in our programs, either directly at William "Hicks" Anderson Community Center, which is in the recreation division of parks, or with our youth and families division and they're really excited, they're really entrepreneurs," said Phillips.
The program would take place at the William “Hicks” Anderson Community Center with the goal of branching off to other community centers in the city.
