The Clinton County Economic Alliance (CCEA) will be hosting an award ceremony to present the winners of the 2011 Clinton County Youth Business Venture (CCYBV) competition on Wednesday, March 16 at the CCEA office in DeWitt. The competition challenged youth, grades 6 – 12, residing in Clinton County, to develop business plans and present them to a panel of area entrepreneurial experts.
\nFive winners will receive monetary prizes from several area sponsors. In addition, Lansing Community College will award a scholarship to the competition’s top winner, Brantley Barnes, a student from DeWitt High School with a book store business called The Book Nook.
\nThe idea for the annual competition was originally sparked from the IGNITE team’s statewide competition. IGNITE is a k-12 entrepreneurial action team in the Prima Civitas Foundation’s Moving Ideas to Market (MI2M) initiative.
\nBrian Coughlin, newly appointed Economic Developer at the CCEA was key in facilitating this year’s competition.
\n“The idea behind this competition is to create a culture for our young people that encourages them and shows them that in the midst of a slowed economy, you can always think about creating opportunities for yourself” says Coughlin.
\nThis years CCYBV competition included submissions from 21 students representing Bath, Dewitt, Pewamo-Westphalia, St. Johns and Ovid Elsie. As a result of the involvement from several mentors, including Kelly Williams, Instructor at both Dewitt High School and Clinton County’s RESA, the amount of submissions nearly doubled from last year’s competition.
\nThe competition’s judging panel included Tom Donaldson from the Small Business Technology Development Center (SBTDC), Jeff Smith from the City of East Lansing and Amanda Avila of the Prima Civitas Foundation (PCF).
\n“This was a great opportunity for students to learn and experience the process of starting a business,” noted Smith.
\nWith his first experience with the youth of Clinton County, Brian Coughlin added “We look forward to continuing the competition next year, and call upon every school in the district to encourage your students to participate.”
\nThe award ceremony will take place in the large conference room at the CCEA office at 12800 Escanaba Dr., DeWitt, MI 48820 at 4pm, March 16th.
\nFor more information regarding next years competition, including sponsoring or participating in the 3rd Annual CCYBV, contact CCEA at 517-669-1345.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Clinton County Economic Alliance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stjindy.com\/archive1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}