About YouthBiz

At YouthBiz, our work occurs at the intersection of innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, youth vision and leadership and the need for creative solutions to the challenges facing our community.

Our Mission & Vision
YouthBiz advances the social and economic prosperity of youth through a focus on entrepreneurship, education and community leadership.  We believe in their power and potential as social and economic leaders and we envision a future where they are the driving force behind the educational, business and community initiatives shaping and improving our neighborhoods.

Our Roots
During 1992’s “Summer of Violence,” eight inner-city teens and a local community leader started YouthBiz to teach job and life skills to youth from some of Denver’s most underserved communities. YouthBiz has remained true to the founding spirit by providing an empowering peer-to-peer, entrepreneurial-based learning environment. In the nineteen years since the organization’s inception, YouthBiz has served over 4,500 youth and distributed over $1.4 million-dollars through academically enriched after school and summer programs.

The Scoop Today
The youth that come to YouthBiz are, as mentioned, remarkable. They are smart, tenacious, resilient and determined. They strive to own businesses, not just be employed by them. They want to create the solutions to the social challenges facing them and their peers, instead of allowing themselves to be defined by stereotypes and statistics. They don’t want to just be accepted into a college, they want to lead their class in scholarships acquired. That is why, in 2012, YouthBiz will undergo a dramatic programmatic overhaul that will take our programming beyond basic skills development, into intensive leadership study and youth-led venture launch. By seizing this strategic opportunity we will benefit our youth by increasing the scope, scale and sustainability of our services, and open our organization up to new revenue streams.