April is financial literacy month, and we’re excited to share that our Englewood participants have been learning business and entrepreneurship skills through a professional development group led by the READI Chicago Englewood outreach team.
The training course is based on an eight-week curriculum developed by Junior Achievement, which also donated teaching materials for the class. Upon completion, participants will receive a certificate of entrepreneurship training.
“The reason I wanted to get into entrepreneurship was to be independent,” said staff member Reality Lovett. “I wanted to create my own lane and be in charge of my future, and I know those are things our participants want, too.”
The course, co-led by Outreach Manager Paul Mireles, covers the basics of business and entrepreneurship and helps participants understand how they’ve already begun to develop these skills in their day-to-day lives. Alongside learning about business skills such as market research and knowing your customer demographics, participants were asked to list their own “side hustles” or those of their friends. These ranged from t-shirt sales to rap videos to making and selling packaged meals.
“See, you’re already doing and practicing a lot of this,” Reality told the group. “So many of these entrepreneurship skills from the street translate to a business environment.”
Much of the course focuses on how to create a business plan, and as participants progress through the course, staff hope to work with them individually to focus in on specific industries they want to pursue.
“I started doing these side hustles just because it was fun, but I didn’t think I could eventually make money off it,” one participant said.
Above all, Reality and Paul try to stress that the key to success is not being afraid to try new things or explore new environments.
“You have to take the opportunity and not be scared,” Reality said. “You’re not scared on the block, so don’t be scared in business.”
