National Job Corps Director Edna Primrose traveled to the Philadelphia Job Corps Center last month to see first-hand the progress of the Center’s Start Young Initiative pilot program. Twelve students from the Center started the program on April 10 and completed it on June 7.

A collaboration between the department’s Employment and Training Administration and the Small Business Administration, the pilot program provides four to six weeks of specialized training to Job Corps participants including information about small business opportunities and resources available to them while encouraging economic self-sufficiency and personal growth within their local community. The Society Corp of Retired Executives (SCORE) also strongly supported the program and provided volunteers who taught the SBA’s entreskills curriculum and served as mentors to the students.

Primrose and representatives from the SBA along with other Job Corps colleagues from the national and regional offices met with students to receive candid feedback on how things are progressing and discuss their entrepreneurial dreams.

“My dream is a day care for children to help working moms, especially moms like the ones here at the Job Corps Center,” said Yolanda Davis. “I’m still working on the marketing and finance part but I know what I want to do and just want to say thank you to you all for making it possible for me and for all of us!” 

Other students’ future hopeful endeavors include owning a bakery and restaurant, developing an online computer parts store, and organizing a music camp for youth.

“I have never heard such creativity and clear cut ideas,” said Dr. Francis Cole, Job Corps regional administrator in Philadelphia. “I have taken notes from you and would stand you next to other business entrepreneurs I’m working with right now. You are the best of the best.”

Nathaniel Bishop, SBA program analyst in Washington, DC, echoed this sentiment. “Today has been great. You all have wonderful ideas and you are the future,” he said.

Primrose was very impressed with the program thus far and encouraged students to continue along the path to success.