BUILD

Building Entrepreneurial Experiences for American Teens

Location: Oakland and East Palo Alto, CA; Washington, DC

BUILD:  Grantee in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011

BUILD is a four-year college preparation program that empowers youth from under-resourced communities across the U.S. Its mission is to use entrepreneurship to ignite the potential of these students and propel them to excel in education and succeed professionally. It began in 1999, the result of attorney Suzanne McKechnie Klahr’s work in an entrepreneurship class she taught at East Palo Alto High School in California. In 2002, the fledgling program became part of the curriculum in several San Francisco Bay Area schools and has further expanded to partner with more than two dozen high schools in California (East Palo Alto, Oakland), Boston, Washington DC, and New York City.  Hundreds of at-risk students are served in any school year.

Almost all BUILD freshmen are from low-income families and are of ethnicities underrepresented on American college campuses.  BUILD supplements traditional school with real-world business experiences and critical skill-building for the future by helping students develop and run their own small businesses.  Participants learn to recognize the correlations between hard work and business success, and between the pursuit of higher education and more productive life trajectories.


For more information, see: http://www.build.org/.

GRANT SUMMARY AND PURPOSE

2008:  $25,000 to support infrastructure for high school programs, specifically through funding Site Directors to work with the at-risk student populations.

2009:  $20,000 to fund the operation of Youth Incubators that help students in high school prepare for college success.

2010:   $25,000 for expansion of the East Oakland (Ca.) Youth Business and Academic Incubator.

2011:    $25,000 to cover additional student participation, and raise overall program excellence, in East Oakland Incubator. 

IMPACT

Reduction in high school drop-out rates and higher levels of college acceptance rates.  Students are better prepared for college and/or other career development programs.