REpurposingNOLA is excited to be mentoring Edna Karr High School for the Brees Dream Challenge

28 Jul 2010

REpurposingNOLA Piece by Peace™ is pleased to be partnered with nine students from Edna Karr Secondary School. Each student was selected by their teachers to participate in the Trust Your Crazy Ideas Challenge that will be led by their faculty team supervisor Eric Smith: “The student team and Edna Karr faculty are incredibly thrilled to be working in this pilot program for the fall semester,” said Eric Smith. “REpurposingNOLA is the perfect entrepreneur fit for Karr.”

Initiated as a partnership between the Brees Dream Foundation and the Idea Village, the Trust Your Crazy Ideas Challenge allows students from each participating school five months to develop a for-profit business venture that will allocate the proceeds to support a school project. Students have until October to brainstorm their business and action plan and in December will pitch their successes to panel judges that will include Drew Brees. As for the winner, the Brees Dream Foundation will match up to $10,000 in revenue generated from the project based on key entrepreneurial elements.

After a15-minute brainstorming session today, the students agreed to call their business venture “rE-Kreate” to be representative of their Edna Karr pride, its initials anchoring the foundation of their business name. The group plans to meet once a week, after school, and would like to utilize fabrics from the school as part of their business model.

Today’s launch marked the first meeting between the Edna Karr students and their mentor, REpurposingNOLA Piece by Peace™ founder, Traci Claussen:

“This is what entrepreneurship is all about,” Traci said. “It starts with one crazy idea and begins to grow like bamboo into a very strong, sustainable resource. When the students put their business name up on the white board, I got chills; we knew it was solid ground from which they could launch.”