Stairway to Success

Stairway Grad

Since 2004, more than 150 students have been YEA business owners. Stairway to Success is being designed to bring YEA's business and teaching models to an ever-growing number of communities, providing the on-site and long distance support that organizations need to make each new YEA program - and the teen entrepreneurs themselves - a success.

Stairway to Success will be an online product or "web ware." The material is interactive, reflecting how YEA teaches and how our students learn. It will include lesson plans, worksheets, podcasts, multi-media lessons, and activities. In addition, all Stairway to Success affiliates will be provided with support services by a trained YEA staff member.

Curriculum Highlights
Stairway to Success focuses on business ownership and developing skills that are relevant and marketable. It is being designed in three major units, each geared toward teaching critical skills at different levels or "steps" of sophistication.

Step One: General Curriculum
These are the general teaching modules in which teens learn the specific business and human dynamic skills they need to succeed as business professionals, whether they are entrepreneurs or employees. These skills can be taught as part of creating a YEA business or as part of a general business training curriculum.

Step Two: Building a Business
This is the business "how-to" kit that teens and their teachers need to implement their unique business idea. It documents each step of creating a small business, providing detailed steps, organizational material and forms, and prototypes that can be followed depending on the business being built. Each step relates back to concepts learned in the general curriculum, showing how to put business concepts into action.

Step Three: Advanced Business Skills
These skills are integrated into the business as it grows. The goal here - a hallmark of YEA's program - is to help teens develop sophisticated business skills, far in advance of what teens typically acquire. These advanced capabilities include sophisticated financial skills such as evaluating quarterly business results, operational skills for increasing business efficiency, and interpersonal skills such as working through complex personnel issues.

Measurements of Success

YEA's success is ultimately measured by its graduates - enabling them to move on to full-time employment and higher education, and putting them on a path to realizing their full talents and economic potential.

Since 2004 YEA has served over 150 teens through the YEA program.

  • 80% of our graduates have matriculated into higher education or advanced vocational programs
  • 55% of graduates not going on to higher education find meaningful full-time employment
  • 60% maintain contact with YEA for at least two years
  • 50% of graduates have requested support on job or school-related issues
  • No YEA graduates have been involved in the criminal courts or incarcerated

By every measure, YEA works! Click here to see how you can sponsor a curriculum unit or a YEA business and contribute to the success and lifetime prospects of our YEA teen entrepreneurs.