While most high school students are thinking about school supplies, classes and extracurriculars, CEO students of Central Minnesota CEO are thinking about what it looks like to start and run their own personal businesses. On Sept. 6, our community began the CEO program year- just the first in a series of steps to help cultivate real life skills in our students and to enter our community into a national network of high caliber young leaders. Central Minnesota CEO is a collaboration of students from Wadena-Deer Creek, Staples-Motley and Verndale.

"CEO" stands for Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities. It is a year-long, experientially learning based course, designed to utilize partnerships in our community to provide an overview of business processes and development.

Throughout the program year, students will visit local businesses, learn from guest speakers, participate in operating a class business, write a business plan and, from concept to reality, build their own legal functioning entity.

It is with this program that our community seeks to develop and invest in the next generation. Being faced with real-life challenges has proven results of developing young people who are leaders and problem solvers. It is with this knowledge that they can see, with refreshed perspective, the opportunity that their community holds.

Along with our partner, The Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship, we firmly believe that twenty-first century skills like problem-solving, teamwork, self-motivation, responsibility, higher-order thinking, communication and inquiry should be at the heart of each student's development throughout this program.

This program's dedication to that mission, paired our community's engagement, will provide each CEO student with the opportunity to develop such skills, setting them up for future successes, and allowing them, along the way, to participate in the experience of a lifetime.

Want to get involved? CEO classes are open to the community. Simply visit our website www.centralmnceo.com to contact our facilitator today.

Source: Pioneer Journal