eBiz4Youth - The Vision

1. All youth deserve the chance to be empowered to succeed in school & in life
2. eBusinesses are tools that can channel resouces from the global community to poverty-striken areas
3. Using real applied research, reading, writing, & math, youth can see real life reasons to stay in school
4. Youth who see real-life value in education are less likely to drop-out of school & more likely to become contributing members of society.

Program Overview:
E-Biz 4 Youth is a non-profit program focused on a practical curriculum to help students learn about internet-based entrepreneurship and develop entrepreneurial ideas. It begins Fall 2008 as a pilot project in Athens, GA, collecting 'before and after' data on student attendance, grades, behavior and survey responses about student attitudes concerning school, teachers, other students, career and life goals, .

Once the pilot data is available, eBiz4Youth will seek additional grant and donor funding to expand the program nationwide to other sites with high poverty rates.

The program involves many steps including:
• Helping each youth identify her/his own unique strengths and life vision
• Helping youth find other kids with like-minded visions and complementary strengths to form entrepreneurial teams
• Helping teams to develop and carry out business plans
• Helping teams learn how to develop online content and internet marketing skills
• Helping teams to learn to collaborate with other teams in joint ventures

Community business people and internet marketers will be selected as volunteer mentors for one or more teams either in person or through a private, moderated, online discussion forum.

The curriculum developed from the pilot program will be web-based with content available several ways:
• Manuals and guidebooks will be formatted as downloadable e-books and available on online.
• Offerings will be available in downloadable and web-based Powerpoint presentations
• Video and audio training modules will be available in streaming and downloadable file formats.
• Discussion boards and listservs will facilitate interaction between students and mentors on each team, and between program partners in the same and in different program locations including program facilitators in different schools, Program Advisors, etc...

This program helps kids to realize real-world value in math and to understand it’s real life applications. It helps them to develop skills in writing, reading, research and in assessing and presenting value propositions to an audience in the form of offers, another essential element of business and of everyday life. The eBiz4Youth program also help children with people skills, learning to work in teams to prepare for the changing work environment and to learn to respect and value people who may be different than themselves, teaching tolerance and respect for diversity.

Research Implications -
How might we:
• better prepare children for a changing work environment?
• foster greater cooperation in the classroom?
• raise retention rates and decrease dropout rates in schools?
• find a way to present math to students that is real and applied, so they want to learn math and have a context in which to retain and apply it?
• give kids a reason to want to come to school, and help them develop a passion for learning?

Probable Project Outcomes:
• Increased math, reading, & writing test scores in schools
• Decreased dropout rates
• Increased school attendance
• Improvement in student attitudes toward school, teachers, & other students
• Students who are prepared for the changing workplace

Potential Economic Benefits:
• Increase in environmentally-friendly companies that provide high-paying, technologically-oriented jobs relocating to poverty-stricken areas where programs are located due to having a workforce that can meet their needs
• Increased tax revenues for poverty-stricken areas where programs are located
• Decrease in crime rates due to increased school retention rates and increased self-esteem of students
• Decrease in costs of social programs such as welfare and corrections
• Bringing funds from the national and global community to areas with high poverty rates.

Pilot Program Resources Already Secured:
• Computers with Internet access
• Unlimited hosting for as many sites as needed
• Video camera and still photo digital camera
• Website design program (NVU) and FTP program (FileZilla) are free resources
• Market research resources are also free
• Over $10,000 in unique training materials (DVDs, CDs, software, manuals, etc.) have been purchased by program founder, Juliet Easton, to initially assist with this interactive program. As volunteers are recruited, they can study these existing training materials to enhance their knowledge in these areas in order to work with the kids.

Basic Curriculum Outline:
The curriculum is not fixed. It is flexible for several reasons:
1) In these early stages, it is important to see how the kids are going to respond.
2) There will be some variability in what order certain concepts are introduced based on the receptivity of the kids. It is very important to keep them engaged , so they want to continue.

Learning Steps -
Here are the basic steps that kids in the eBiz4Youth program will go through (Again, the order may deviate slightly in order to keep them interested and motivated):
1) Kids list their interests.
2) Kids split into teams with similar interests.
3) Kids do some simple market research (fairly basic, easy and only takes about 1-2 hours) to determine if there is a market that shares their interest(s).
4) Kids do a competitive analysis to see how their market is being served by other online entities in order to determine if this is a viable market for them to serve.
5) Kids' teams create a “business plan that will fit on a napkin” that defines their market, what useful information they will provide to that market, how they will capture, sustain and direct attention, and how they will monetize the traffic that comes to their website(s).
6) Teams create a website and blog that will attract and engage their target audience – can include original articles, blog posts, video, audio, forums, free reports, etc...
7) Teams create their plan to drive website/blog traffic, then they implement the plan.
8) Teams create articles and submit them to Squidoo, Hub Pages, article submission sites, and other online sites that can drive traffic to their websites.
9) Teams learn how to write effective press releases and submit them to online and offline media to drive traffic to their sites.
10) Teams create accounts on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and other social marketing sites (that are different than their personal accounts), connect with other people on those sites that are in their target audience using groups they create to drive traffic to their sites.
11) Teams learn to create videos and submit them to YouTube and Google Video, and place the videos in MySpace and Facebook to drive traffic to their sites.
12) Teams learn to create and manage discussion forums, build and communicate effectively with an email list for their website, create multiple auto-responder series for their audience and develop an ongoing relationship/conversation with their market.
13) Teams create a plan to monetize traffic to their site and implement this plan (this could be eBook sales, membership sites, Google Adsense, affiliate links to products their market would like, advertising on the site, etc...)

Program Revenue
All revenue created by the eBiz4Youth kids’ websites will go into a fund that will:
1) Provide incentives for the kids that complete the program, including enabling them to earn laptop computers.
2) Create a scholarship fund that can be used for kids that complete in the program for continuing education after high school graduation (college, tech school, or if they truly want to become internet entrepreneurs, additional training in these areas.)
3) Expand the eBiz4Youth program to other locations to serve more at-risk kids both in Athens-Clarke County and other high poverty areas.

Program Advisors, Mentors, and Instructors:
Program Advisors thus far are Matt Bacak and Kimberly+Clay Cotton. Matt’s main websites are http://mattbacak.com and http://powerfulpromoter.com. Matt’s bio is here: http://powerfulpromoter.com/matts_bio.html. Kimberly and Clay’s main involvements are: Long Term Care Insurance http://www.prepsmart.com , http://claycotton.com and http://immersiversity.com , along with their elite WebCraft Consulting and Design business (Call 520-829-1641).

Matt is willing to come to Athens (he lives in Atlanta), speak to the kids in eBiz4Youth and teach them about what he does online to make money. Matt has also committed to finding kids who have been successful in internet marketing so the kids in eBiz4Youth can see that other kids have done this.

Clay has Multiple Sclerosis, so they rarely leave their mountain home in Prescott, AZ). Clay will primarily be working directly with Juliet in a strategic advisory capacity for the program, both connecting her with other internet promoters and helping with curriculum and program development concepts. He has committed to do as much as he can to help with eBiz4Youth. Kimberly may advise from afar on web design and implementation.

Willie Crawford, a longtime internet luminary, and Greg Cesar, an reknowned expert in GoogleAdwords, have both agreed to be program advisors. Juliet has recorded videos of Willie and Greg speaking personally with kids who will be future participants - Topics include how they, themselves, grew up in underprivledged circumstances and went on to success in what they do online.

Brad Fallon, a search engine optimization expert, public speaker and internet educator with several, wildly successful, e-commerce sites, has agreed to donate internet marketing training videos to eBiz4Youth. Brad’s blog is http://bradfallon.com and has links to his main websites at the top right of that page.

A local mentor/instructor is DeWayne Hamilton who has committed to teaching financial education to the kids in the program. DeWayne’s business is Totally Free, Inc. and focuses on helping low-income people with “Home Buyer and Financial Education.”

Juliet Easton has spoken with many , additional internet successes who are very interested in helping with this program, and they are eager to be contacted as soon as there are definite parameters for the program. As soon as this happens Juliet will contact them to let them know that we have the “green light”, and they can begin to contribute as mentors, program advisors and as fundraising promoters. Juliet has activey networked with over 500 internet promoters though programs she is involved with, letting them know a little about the program. Response has been extremely positive for supporting these emergent, eBiz4Youth programs.

Volunteer and Intern Recruitment Plan:
Juliet Easton will be recruiting volunteers and interns. UGA students majoring in marketing, advertising, public relations, nonprofit management or social work are the most likely candidates. Also any high school students that are interested could be volunteers as well. Juliet has extensive volunteer and intern recruitment and management experience.

Potential Partners:
• The State of Georgia Governor’s Small Business Center has expressed interest in this project.
• Professors and/or students at UGA in the College of Education, the Terry College of Business, the School of Social Work, the New Media Institute and the departments of Computer Science and Public Administration would be logical partners that might be interested in participating.
• The Clarke County School District would be a logical partner in implementation of the program in schools that are interested in participating.
• It would be extremely beneficial to work with companies in the UGA New Media Synergy Center.
• The Athens Area Chamber of Commerce could be of great assistance in accessing business people to be local team mentors and to give input into the curriculum.
• Business owners with successful online-based businesses would be great Program Advisors and mentors.

Other Potential Resources for the Long-term Growth of eBiz4Youth:
The UGA New Media Institute student volunteers could assist with:
• Student volunteers who want to work kids in the program on web development
The UGA Terry College of Business student volunteers and service learning class projects could assist with:
• Business plans for student projects
• Database management with the Management Information Systems Department
The UGA college of Education could assist with:
• Curriculum Development
• Educational Technology Resources

What stage is the program eBiz4Youth in right now?
The eBiz4Youth pilot program will begin in Fall 2008. We will be working with middle school students attending the Clarke County School District. We are recruiting additional Program Advisors, Volunteers , Mentors, Sponsors, and Supporters for both the pilot program and for long-term growth of the eBiz4Youth Program.