CINCINNATI — A free summer program dreamed up by a Cincinnati nonprofit is aimed at teaching kids the inner workings of entrepreneurship, fashion and everything in between.
Ashley Zepahua is exactly the kind of kid the founders of Bigger Than Sneakers had in mind when starting the Bigger Than Sneakers Academy.
"I’ve always created and tailored my own clothes,” Zepahua said. “I’m not very tall so I don’t fit into a lot of stuff.”
The Grant County High School junior already crochets and sews. Now, she gets the chance to learn even more skills. This program immerses kids like her in the fashion industry and teaches them entrepreneurial skills.
"Students sometimes think that you have to be the store owner or you have to be the designer, but you could be the accountant, you can be the marketing team behind it, you could be on the production line if you wanted to,” said Natalie Morean, executive director of Bigger Than Sneakers.
BTS is a nonprofit working to showcase the larger ecosystem surrounding sneaker culture.
The 15 kids enrolled in the free program will get a crash course in a variety of topics like financial planning and design.
“We got to speak with some of the workers at Apple and they got to teach us how to use Procreate, so this is my first dabbling into digital art,” Zepahua said.
And after the program concludes, kids who attended are sent on their way with the tools to use everything they just learned.
“We purchased iPads and Apple Pencils for all of the students to use during the program and to keep afterwards,” Morean said.
The program is only two weeks long, but Morean says it’s enough time to completely change the participants futures.
“The program’s really creating this opportunity to change these students’ trajectories," Morean said.
The top students in the program will get $1,000 to put toward higher education or to start their business.
Bigger Than Sneakers' annual event that helps them fund programs like this is in a few weeks. The Cincinnati SneakerBall is on August 5 at Hotel Covington. Proceeds from ticket sales will go directly back to BTS.
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