Teens win inaugural Detroit entrepreneurship competition

Four students who attend Grand Valley-authorized charter schools came up with a way to help improve access to fresh food to neighborhoods in downtown Detroit, and were awarded $2,500 in prize money for their innovative ideas. 

The students — Camille Brown (Taylor Preparatory High School), Brenda Waites (Taylor Preparatory High School), Anthony Vickers (Taylor Preparatory High School) and Imani Ahmad (Canton Preparatory High School) — won the first Teen Entrepreneur Summer Academy (TESA) in Detroit for their plan called Healthy Streets. The program would take fresh produce from Detroit's Eastern Market and transport it directly to the surrounding neighborhoods, providing fresh, nutritious food to people who aren't able to get it on their own.

The pitch came at the conclusion of the first-ever TESA program in Detroit, which brought together 40 students from several Detroit-area Grand Valley-authorized charter schools and other area schools for a week-long camp that teaches students about entrepreneurship and business development. 

Final pitches from the student teams were presented to a group of Detroit business leaders, who decided the winners. Judges included Mary Kramer, vice president and publisher of Crain's Detroit Business and vice chair of Grand Valley's Board of Trustees; Bill Luse, president of 100 Black Men of Greater Detroit, and many more.

TESA has been held in Grand Rapids for the past 10 years, and both the Grand Rapids and Detroit versions provided students with team-building activities, research experience, field trips and more. 

Two other teams took home prize money as well:

Team Uber Med, made up of Raphael Clements, Janhvi Vyas (Taylor Preparatory High School), Chloe Davis (Henry Ford Academy, School for Creative Studies), Marcus Woodford (University Preparatory Math and Science High School) and Barnard Muhammad (Michigan Virtual Charter Academy) took second prize, worth $1,500 for their idea that would provide transportation to and from doctor appointments for homebound families. 

Third place and $1,000 was awarded to Madison Foster (Jalen Rose Academy), Nisha Krishnan (Grand Blanc High School), James Pope (Taylor Preparatory High School) and Terrell White (Cornerstone Health and Technology High School) for Medic-Go, a diagnostic medical kiosk system aimed at reducing unnecessary emergency room traffic. 

The academy is a program offered by the Richard M. and Helen DeVos Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Grand Valley's Seidman College of Business. The program was offered in Detroit in collaboration with, and sponsored by, the Grand Valley Charter Schools Office. Other details and the full list of sponsors is available at http://www.gvsu.edu/cei/tesa-detroit-183.htm

For more information, contact the Grand Valley Charter Schools Office at (616) 331-2240.