Young Americans Center For Financial Education

Programs: Young ameritowne is a hands-on program that introduces 5th graders from elementary schools throughout colorado to our free enterprise system. The thirty-seven lesson curriculum taught in the school by the teacher culminates when the students run a life-like town of 17 businesses for a day, bringing their learning to life and experiencing free enterprise first-hand. Participation: 32,996 during 2017.

young americans center for financial education also offers a variety of entrepreneurship training programs through our youthbiz division. Serving denver-area youth ages 11 to 18 with targeted focus on those from low-income, underserved schools and neighborhoods, youth learn the foundations of business and entrepreneurship enabling them to identify opportunities and to develop products and services that create value. Youthbiz offers two programs, startup and out-of-the-box. Startup is an entry level program designed to teach youth the basics of entrepreneurship including need identification, prototype development and business pitch. Youth biz out-of-the-box, still in the pilot phase, takes students further into the production and sales cycles with real retail opportunities, such as our youthbiz marketplace. In 2017, youthbiz served 1,701 students in 2017.

international towne is a one-of-a-kind program that introduces middle school students to the financial realities of the global marketplace. After weeks of classroom lessons and activities, the students-turned-world-citizens come to international towne to run the sixteen-country world for a day, experiencing the economic concepts of global trading, currency exchange, importing and exporting, and cultural values. Participation: 10,991 students during 2017.

youthbiz marketplace provides a forum where youth can sell their unique handmade products or services to the public twice a year, in winter and spring. Youthbiz stars, a celebration of young entrepreneurs, is a colorado business competition for 6-21 year-old entrepreneurs. Young americans center for financial education launched spark change, a school-based service learning program, in 25 schools in 2017. In addition, the organization also conducted a variety of community outreach programming including money matters classes, tours and presentations. Rural young americans center for financial education, llc in wray, colorado offers rural young ameritowne to schools in eastern colorado and across the borders of kansas and nebraska. In 2017, 1,070 students participated in rural ameritowne. In addition, young americans center for financial education runs a 13 one-week day camps throughout the summer. Themes for the camps include personal finance and banking, free enterprise, global economics and entrepreneurship. Summer camp participation was 1,232 youth in 2017.