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STARTUP

Project Innovate: Social Entrepreneur Incubator for Youth

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Project Innovate: Social Entrepreneur Incubator for Youth

Chattanooga is the entrepreneurship capital of the Southeast, right? Well what about the underprivileged youth? We definitely need more. Project Innovate will empower underserved youth with social entrepreneurship skills to create solutions to problems that their communities face. Students will develop their own ideas for a product or program addressing the issue they choose and will pitch it to a panel of community leaders. The top 3 projects will be awarded $400 dollars each for implementation. Add in refreshments, supplies and marketing and you have our $2,050 grant to fund this winter 2017 event.

Who is making this happen? Anjali Chandra (Seriously, click her name and read a paragraph about her). At 11 she created the non-profit GlobalEXCEL with a mission to equip underprivileged youth with the resources and skillsets they need for a healthy, financially secure future. Like whoa. In December 2013 she won an UNFoundation grant for a program called PowerIt Up, you can read all about how much Mayor Berke loved it here. When she accomplished this feat she was a junior in high school. Today she attends Harvard. Yes, the Harvard.

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1 Million Cups Chattanooga June 2013

Recipeint:  1 Million Cups

1 Million Cups is based on the premise that it takes a million cups of coffee and the conversations that begin around them to build a strong entrepreneurial community. Bill Brock and Allie O’Connell visited Kansas City in March where the concept began through a program of the Kauffman Foundation. They started with just a couple dozen people, and has grown to be a weekly staple of their startup community with 250 attendees every Wednesday morning.

1MC Chattanooga kicked off on May 29th with a presentation by Joe Ledbetter of Chattanooga Whiskey. The UNFoundation funded badly needed chairs, a projector, and a screen that was previously being borrowed and scraped together each week from local non-profits. The results are already occurring and gaining momentum each week. New Chattanooga business are getting feedback from potential customers and collaborators. Future entrepreneurs are exposed to an array of types of businesses and projects and attendees are bouncing new business ideas off of one another. 

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