Creative Juice PSA

Composing Original Music with Kurt Mann of American Green Media for Creative Juice Competition

– by Jason Sandford for AsheVegas | September 3, 2008

The challenge for teams of Western North Carolina college students sounds simple enough: Take a piece of garbage and create value out of it, while getting across a message of environmental responsibility. The underlying objective: to help teach young people what it feels like to be an entrepreneur.

Who’s got the juice? Creative Juice is a competition among teams of college students who will be challenged to take a piece of everyday garbage and turn it into something valuable that communicates environmental responsibility.

That’s the essence of the Creative Juice Collegiate Competition, which started at AdvantageWest Economic Development Group but has grown to include several regions around the country.

“The goal is, through this emphasis on youth engagement, to tap into the creativity and innovation of our youth,” says AdvantageWest CEO Dale Carroll. That’s critical now because the generation of young people in college and just entering the workforce, known as the Millennials, “has a higher interest and potential for entrepreneurship than any generation in the history of our country,” he says.

Teams in the region have until Sept. 10 to register, and the competition begins at 9 a.m. on Sept. 11 when the throwaway item will be announced during a live Webcast from the Carolina Connect conference at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville. The annual conference brings together investors and entrepreneurs from across the Southeast for networking and professional development.