The Department of Labor will award up to 20 grants for educational institutions to help at-risk youth learn in-demand job skills through the new Job Corps Scholars Program.
https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=321659
Thoughts
There may be an opportunity for entrepreneurial innovation via this important initiative. The term “at-risk youth” is an unfortunate label that stunts growth opportunities and leaves a large majority of them at the bottom of the pyramid. The positive upside is to flip the script and recognize that this pool of talent have strengths, interests, aspirations and competencies like any other individual and it behooves to make them producers and consumers. Many of them have learned life lessons through the actions or misdeeds of the past. In many instances, these life lessons can build the moral fiber of resilience and enable them to become breakaway learners.
A Gallup study has found that America’s dynamism is in rapid decline and what we need are more entrepreneurs who possess the ability to commercialize innovations. The study issues a clarion call to America’s high school students to create the pipeline of America’s builders and enhance economic growth.
“Gallup analytics estimate that of the 4 million high school graduates each year, 100,000 can build organizations of significance and 20,000 of these are future blue-chip entrepreneurs who can build organizations with no limits to size — we just don’t know which graduates they are.”
Leveraging their lived experiences at-risk youth can develop to become more determined and gritty, learn in-demand job skills, and re-purpose their talent to emerge as unusual builders and compete for the future. It would be unfortunate for America’s investors to write off this underutilized talent as distressed assets. Rather these investors should consider (1) taking a bet on this talent pool by affording them a second chance, (2) assist them in their entrepreneurial journey to unleash their brilliance, and (3) power the venturesome consumption of existing innovations on the (non-)technology shelf.
According to a study conducted by Harvard Business School:
“We know that 68% of the American public actually dreams about owning a small business and we know that 93% of the American population thinks it’s important to support small business, but they don’t.”
Taking a page from this statistic I hope to use the Solution Focused Coaching frame (stepping away from problem saturation) and work with at least one individual to enable him/her self-discover his/her “rugged individualism“ (mojo).
My job-to-be-done is to find the Mandela in my coaching client so that (s)he can “build to become” (a better version of himself) an entrepreneurial capitalist with a moral compass.
Feel free to share about the Job Corps Scholars Program. I am happy to collaborate and help as needed. Let’s rollup our sleeves and kickoff a portfolio of projects with appropriate signage signaling that America is a “hat hat area under construction” with an appetite to build at least one more business on Main Street (not just Wall Street).
Sometimes when you feel that you’re hitting a brick wall it is prudent to invoke sage advice about “mining the diamonds in the rough” while preserving the audacity of hope (pun intended).
The think tanks should note that besides (re)-“building airports” in cherrypicked Silicon Valley zipcodes we also need to motivate and empower the nextgen “Wright Brothers” to “build airplanes” (that also pass safety checks!) in non-Silicon Valley zipcodes in the heartland while noting that there are several airports that dot the landscape of opportunity.
Key #Tweet-akeway
@Gallup
reports that “#America-‘s dynamism is in rapid decline”. It is time to *Build* https://t.co/O9yXJIqHbU [Idea mashup–> https://t.co/wHg2oFoklS] #traumainformed #mentalhealth @KarenGrossEdu
@dr_treisman #Build w/ What I’ve Got (BWIG) #LeadwithHeart while #WeCanDoThis— Ramachandran (@ramu_atm) October 26, 2019
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