We chose this project because it is proactive and helps youth build various life skill sets early.
This is extremely important in our communities of color to continue to break barriers and systems that hinder economic growth.

Mini Kids Entrepreneur Fair of Rhode Island

I am launching an initiative that I started with my sons last year, during COVID. Together we started a business that my now 5 year old son calls, Bubbas Snack Shack. He calls himself the CEO of his company and benefited greatly from his one day experience. We invited several family and friends to support his opening day and he amazed me with his work ethic and ability to focus and run his own business. Through the preparation process he developed personally and professionally in key learning areas such as communication, critical thinking, teamwork, interpersonal skills, financial literacy, independence, accountability, and more! Over the course of the year, he repeatedly asked me if he could run his business again so I decided to share this rewarding experience with other children and parents within our community. On August 7th, I will be hosting our very first Mini Kids Entrepreneur Fair. We have a total of 20 kids participating - I've worked with parents to help guide their children through the process as this is a new experience for most. After this event, I plan to expand my initiative and build a curriculum to teach kids how to start their own business. Studies show that starting young is key! We need more entrepreneurs in our community! The skills children gain and develop through practicing entrepreneurship is priceless. I hope to give children in our community a platform to develop by exposing them to entrepreneurship.

I come from a family of entrepreneurs and I have always wondered why I never explored that world until recently. I've come to learn that it was due to lack of direct exposure. For me, just knowing people in my family were entrepreneurs wasn't enough. I needed someone to invest in me - to show me the ropes! This is what I hope to do with children in our community.

Will you use the funds to host another event in the City of Providence this year?

My plan with Mini Kids Entrepreneur Fair is to host it annually in Providence, beginning 2022. I plan to learn and grow from the event I am hosting on August 7th, as it is my 1st one, and expand on future events in Providence annually. I applied for this grant to support my initiative in two ways; financially and professionally. I hope to connect with people in Providence to support me in bringing this project to Providence. I started working on this project in May of this year and within a short time have made strides, but there's more work to be done before I host another event. Here's an idea of what I'd like to do before I officially kick off this project in Providence.
Build a curriculum to teach children how to start their own business.
Analyze the Mini Kids Entrepreneur Event, collect feedback and make improvements for the 2022 event.
We will have a person on site collecting footage of the event on August 7th so we can create promotional videos for 2022.
Continue to build on the website and do more research to provide children and families with resources.
Involve students from the MET High School community to support the event, serve as mentors.

Will you also provide access and target communities of color to participate in this event?

My main goal is to provide access and target communities of color. My husband and I started having conversations on how we could give back to children of color within our community. We believe it's all about exposure and access. If you can expose children at a very young age there's a greater chance they will catch interest and develop personally, professionally, socially and academically. For the event on August 7th, 61.5% of vendors are children of color. With the support from people in Providence, we hope to increase that percentage greatly. If we are given a platform we can make it happen!