Through a new program, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation will give a group of students the opportunity to immerse themselves in Kansas City’s startup culture for the summer.
Students from the Foundation’s Kauffman Scholars program will be able to work part time with area startups and local businesses to gain real-world experience and explore a fuller range of career opportunities.
“We’ve always looked to maximize our resources here at Kauffman and find intersections betweene entrepreneurs and education,” Jabari Turner, executive director of Kauffman Scholars, told Silicon Prairie News. “We thought it would be a great idea to take advantage of the great startup community we have here and infuse our students in it to make real-life connections.”
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The program, which will be called StartupScholars, will pair a Kauffman Scholar with a KC startup for a summer internship. Students will be able to work 20 hours per week, and there will be no cost to the startup, as Kauffman will pay the students a stipend.
“We have some outstanding students with really great talent who haven’t been harnessed yet,” Turner (right) said.
The Kauffman Scholars program began in 2003 as a college access and scholarship program for low-income Kansas City students with involvement beginning in 7th grade and running through college graduation.
StartupScholars hopes to place roughly 100 current Kauffman Scholars and Turner says they’re currently looking for startups interested in hosting a student for the summer program.
“Our students are super pumped,” he said. “We’re waiting to finalize the list of businesses before we open it up to them, but we’ve already been getting regular calls and emails about the opportunity.”
To learn more about the program, companies are invited to an informational session on Tuesday, Feb. 4, at 6:30 p.m. at the Kauffman Foundation. Attendees are requested to RSVP for the event.
Interested startups can apply online to the StartupScholars program through Feb. 15.
Learn more about Kauffman Scholar’s new StartupScholars summer internship program:
Credits: Jabari Turner photo from LinkedIn.
