Around 120 students participated for the competition all are ranging from various parts of Southern Indiana. Photo by Erik Hackman | News and Tribune
SELLERSBURG — Four Southern Indiana high schools and around 120 students competed Friday in the Career Development Conference at Ivy Tech.
The competition was put on by Southern Indiana Works through its Jobs for America's Graduates (JAG) program. Currently, they have six schools in the program but are looking to expand it to 14 or 15 by next January.
JAG is a program, typically for high school juniors and seniors, that helps kids be successful in life and keeps them on the path to graduation and into post secondary education, a career or a combination of both.
It’s taken as an elective class for the students and they are taught skills such as financial literacy, communication skills, job search, career exploration and other life skills.
“Part of what they’re doing (in the class) is preparing for the Career Development Conference,” said Tony Waterson, Southern Indiana Works’ president and CEO. “That’s what you’re seeing today, somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 local high school kids competing.”
Students from Austin High School, Scottsburg High School, New Albany High School and West Washington High School competed against each other in Entrepreneurship presentations, critical thinking, employability skills and more.
Jaiden Hall and Maddox Culpepper, both seniors at New Albany High School, competed in the entrepreneurship presentation of the competition.
They came up with the company “NewKickz” where they will buy old shoes, clean them and sell them as affordable shoes for people.
“So basically, our inspiration came from me growing up as a kid and my mom couldn’t always afford to buy me expensive pairs of shoes like Jordans’,” Culpepper said. “I just decided to come up with the idea myself of what would be a good idea, like a good alternative, to still be able to have the high fashion, up to date shoes for a reasonable price.”
“We like the idea, we think it can go pretty far,” Hall said. “Especially with how wide the show market is.”
Not only would they be buying, cleaning and selling shoes, they would also offer a feature to clean shoes for people.
“I feel like if we wanted to go full head steam into it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Culpepper said. “We have the resources, the good community and we have two bright brains to get the train started.”
“It wouldn’t be hard to start this because you can start with one pair of shoes and just keep going from there,” Hall said.
Before the awards were given out, Donna Reed, the director of career development at Indiana University Southeast and a Jeffersonville City Council member, gave a speech about leadership and what makes someone a leader.
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more and do more, then you are a leader that quote is by John Quincey Adams,” Reed said. “I think that encompasses what a leader is to me.”
She then asked the students what qualities they look for in a leader. Guidance, confidence, taking initiative and good sportsmanship are some qualities the students said they wanted in a leader.
After hearing what the students wanted in a leader, Reed told them about three major tenets of leadership that she thinks is important.
“Leadership is not about you, it’s about others, leadership is active and leadership is hard and that’s okay,” Reed said.
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