Youth Start Ventures with the Help of United Way

Imagine for a moment: You have a great idea for a start-up venture.  You have just won the seed money to launch it, and you've secured the brightest minds and fastest rising stars from Deloitte, Windspeed Ventures, marlo marketing/communications, Aigner Prensky and other leading companies to help you and your team make your dream  a success.  And one more thing... you're 15 years old.

That's the idea behind a United Way initiative that is pairing Massachusetts teenagers with some of Boston's emerging business leaders.  United Way's Youth Venture program inspires and invests in teams of young people, ages 12-18, to start social projects or business ventures that create positive, lasting change in their communities.  Teens enrolled in Youth Venture are matched with a group of young professional volunteers who are part of United Way's Emerging Leader Program.  The volunteer advisors help them hone their business strategies, develop marketing plans and improve their presentation skills for the projects.

Examples of matches:

• Emerging leaders from Deloitte are working with youth from Lynn's Gregg Neighborhood House to run workshops on money management for their peers.
• Emerging leaders from Summit Partners are working with youth from Codman Square Boys Talk Program to design and sell fair trade T-shirts that promote positive messages.

To be eligible for the seed funding to launch their idea, each of the youth venture groups presents their social entrepreneurial ideas to a panel of judges.  The winning groups each receive a United Way Youth Venture grant of up to $1,500 for their civic venture. Each year, Emerging Leaders take on the responsibility of fundraising for these grants.

I had the pleasure of attending one of these fundraising events on Saturday: the Emerging Leaders' Gala at Boston's Children's Museum.  At the event, I got a chance to see some of the Youth Venture Projects as presented by the young entrepreneurs running them.  Photos below.