Professor, SIFE, and community groups to offer Pueblo Apprentice competition
 
Pueblo –The CSU-Pueblo Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team along with Castle Investment, LDC Properties, DD Marketing, Puebloans By Choice, and the Pueblo Downtown Association announce a business idea competition open to any Pueblo County student enrolled in grades kindergarten through graduate school that offers a total prize package of up to $13,000.
Recent news and community discussions surrounding the now-defunct Indian Casino proposal inspired Mike Wakefield, assistant professor of entrepreneurship and management in the Hasan School of Business, to propose a contest to business leaders to generate alternative business ideas.
 
According to Wakefield, who also serves as faculty advisor to the SIFE team, “We want to accomplish a number of objectives through this project, including offering an outlet where our area youth can be involved in generating ideas for the future growth of our community and providing an opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs. Our hope is to create a positive experience for these students that will encourage our best and brightest to become involved in our community.”
Contestants must be enrolled at an institution of learning in Pueblo County including public schools, charter schools, private schools, home-school, Pueblo Community College, or CSU-Pueblo. Students are encouraged to submit idea proposals that utilize the five-acre parcel of land on the southeast corner of Main Street and the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk Project (HARP). A large warehouse building formerly occupied by Andrews Food is currently located on the parcel. The best ideas, as judged by a panel of local business and community leaders, will be eligible for cash prizes and the opportunity to pursue their business proposal. Sponsors of the competition have offered up to $10,000 in seed money to invest in the winning proposal or a four-month apprenticeship worth $10,000. First place teams in the K-12 and Collegiate categories will each receive $1,000 in cash with smaller prizes awarded for second ($300) and third place ($200) in each category.

SIFE President Jared Call indicated that student contestants, either individually or in teams of up to five persons, should outline a vision for the property in a proposal for this five-acre parcel. The idea may be for a large, single business, or a number of smaller businesses and may include current structures, or recommend that current structures be razed. Contestants may include diagrams, pictures, graphics, tables, or anything that might help the judges to comprehend the vision. Proposals also should justify why the idea is a sound one. Proposals may be up to10 pages in length and should include the names and contact information for the contestants.
Members of the SIFE team are available to present workshops to start students on their
creative journeys. The first of these workshops will be held with Louie Carleo of LDC Properties at 4 p.m. on Nov. 10 at the old Andrews Food Building.

Winning proposals may receive seed money to pursue their business idea. If no team members are willing or able to pursue the business idea submitted in the proposal, the ideas become the intellectual property of the Pueblo Downtown Association.

Teams should register by Nov. 25 at www.PuebloApprentice.com. Proposals must be received at the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce, 302 N. Santa Fe, Pueblo, 81003, by 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 2. Teams should submit three hard copies and one copy of the proposal, either on 3.5” floppy or CD, preferably in MS-Word. Semi-finalists will be notified on or before Dec. 9 and will be asked to present their idea to a panel of judges on Saturday, Dec. 17. Projects will be evaluated for (1) creativity, (2) the potential positive impact that implementation of the vision would have on the community, and (3) feasibility of the proposal as presented.

For more information on the competition, go to www.PuebloApprentice.com or contact Sean McCarthy of Castle Investment at 719-545-6692. To request a SIFE workshop at your school, contact Jared Call at jb.call@colostate-pueblo.edu


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