Mission: Vision: to create additional career choices for every high school student. Mission: to inspire and engage high school students through hands-on entrepreneurial experiences by developing and teaching curriculum, partnering students with mentors, hosting business plan competitions, and creating opportunities for students to start and run small businesses. Goals: 1. To provide our students with interdisciplinary project based learning to develop entrepreneurial business and life skills. 2. To provide our students a competitive edge for college entrance and career development. 3. To provide positive role models to our students through graduate level mentors. 4. To increase awareness among our students, the public, and the private sectors of entrepreneurial opportunities. 5. To build networks/alliances between our students and their communities.
Programs: In fiscal 2017, 17 high schools, and more than 400 students, enrolled in the year-long project echo program, which included attendance at five major events hosted at ucla anderson school of management. Approximately 225 high school students in 50 teams competed in our annual business plan competition. Echo awarded $6,250 in prize money to the schools to assist students launch their business ventures, provide scholarships, and help schools and students pay for their school supplies and college applications. Echo's inter-scholastic entrepreneurial program is supported by four major events hosted at ucla anderson school of management. These events include:1)two business boot camps where teens are taught concepts in ideation, marketing, finance and public speaking by industry leaders and executives2)mega mentor day where teams come together to review their formal business plans with mentors prior to submitting plans for competition evaluation. Teams also practice their formal presentations in front of a small audience and receive feedback in preparation for the competition. 3)business plan competition is attended by a couple hundred teens who compete for cash awards and start-up funds. Written business plans and presentations are both evaluated. Through echo's mentorship program, 100 mba students from ucla anderson school of management, mentored our high school teams, as follows:1. Assisted high school teams in developing business ideas through a formal ideation platform and following echo's curriculum. 2. Assisted high school business teams in developing formal presentations and power point presentations through presentation rehearsals. 3. Assisted students in hands-on exercises during echo's two boot camps. 4. Provided mentorship to more than 100 teens who attended echo's mega mentor day in preparation for the formal business plan competition. To date, echo teams have started 11 student-run on-campus businesses that are fully operational.
I volunteered as a Judge with Project ECHO at the 2015 Business Plan Competition, hosted at UCLA earlier this spring, and I was beyond impressed with the Business Plan presentations I had the opportunity to judge and evaluate.
ECHO makes the day very exciting for participants, parents and Judges alike! I found this to be an extremely rewarding experience for me, personally and I bet the confidence levels of the program participants goes through the roof after they experience Project ECHO!
I am looking forward to volunteering again next year!
I was very proud to sponsor a team of students to participate in the Project Echo entrepreneur academy. The students loved the program and especially participating in the business plan competition. What an exciting adventure it has been for them, and now they have caught the bug and really want to start their business. Thank you!
