Our Story
Our story began with creativity, safety, and access.
YEI began as an arts-based T-shirt printing entrepreneurship program rooted in a simple belief: young people deserve safe, creative, and practical ways to earn, lead, and shape their futures.
Early YEI programming began with arts-based entrepreneurship, T-shirt printing, and creative skill-building.
Where it started
Our first canvas was a T-shirt. Our bigger goal was access.
Youth Entrepreneur Institute began at the Malcolm X Opportunity Center and Langston Dwelling as an arts-based T-shirt printing entrepreneurship program.
The goal was simple and urgent: give young people a safe, creative, and practical way to earn money, build discipline, and see their own talents as valuable.
YEI was created to help youth tap into their creative skills instead of turning to risky or unsafe ways to make money. From the beginning, students were not just learning about entrepreneurship. They were creating real products, working together, building technical skills, and producing professional-quality work.
They were learning that creativity could become income. Art could become business. Their ideas had value.
The art of business.
The business of art.
Our foundation
We started with art and business.
From day one, YEI has been rooted in two foundations: creativity and entrepreneurship. We often describe it as the art of business and the business of art.
Art was not treated as an extra activity. It was the entry point. It gave young people a way to express themselves, build confidence, practice discipline, and connect to real opportunities in the creative economy.
Business gave that creativity a structure. Students learned how to turn ideas into products, products into brands, and brands into income.
Creativity opened the door. Entrepreneurship showed students how to walk through it.
How we grew
We built programs around what youth needed.
As YEI grew, our programs grew from what we saw, heard, and experienced with students.
When we saw young people who were behind in math and science, or disconnected from subjects that felt boring or unrelated to their lives, we did not simply tell them to try harder.
We redesigned the learning experience.
That is how programs like BizBeauty grew. The curriculum was created to make STEM culturally relevant, hands-on, fun, and connected to things students already cared about. Students could learn measurement, chemistry, product development, branding, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship through cosmetics, body care, candles, and other creative products.
Every program we teach has grown from a need we saw and a belief we carried from the beginning: young people learn best when they can create, apply, earn, and see themselves in the work.
Creative economy
Creativity is still our foundation.
YEI has expanded far beyond T-shirt printing, but the foundation has never changed.
Every program still connects back to creativity, the creative economy, and entrepreneurship in some way.
Students explore arts, design, humanities, media, product development, business, STE(A)M, branding, and real-world market experiences. They connect with Washington, DC’s vibrant creative economy while learning how creative skills can become career pathways, income streams, leadership tools, and opportunities for ownership.
Why access matters
Talent was never the problem.
The young people YEI serves have always had creativity, intelligence, style, humor, leadership, and ambition.
What they have not always had is equal access.
Where we are now
We grew into an ecosystem.
What began as a creative entrepreneurship program has grown into a youth-powered economic ecosystem.
Entrepreneurship, STE(A)M, creative production, financial literacy, career exposure, and youth development.
A social enterprise platform connecting youth-made products to real customers and program sustainability.
Youth-owned ventures where students test ideas, create products, build brands, and practice ownership.
Pop-ups, vending opportunities, showcases, KidBizCON, pitch competitions, and customer experiences.
College visits, career exposure, Smart Hustle Abroad, first passports, first flights, and expanded possibilities.
Stipends, internships, work-based learning, and income-building experiences that help youth earn and lead.
The firsts
Those firsts became part of YEI’s model.
Students still begin with creativity. But now that creativity can lead to a candle line, a body care brand, a T-shirt design, a digital product, a vending opportunity, a paid internship, a pitch competition, a passport, a first flight, or a new vision for the future.
Those firsts are not accidents. YEI creates them on purpose.
Poverty closes doors. YEI opens them.
Our mission is to put poverty out of business, one first at a time. That mission is not just a slogan. It is how we design programs.
We create safe, creative, and practical pathways for young people to build skills, earn income, explore careers, travel beyond familiar places, and experience opportunity in real life.
Exposure changes what young people can imagine. Real experience changes what they believe they can do.
The story continues
The story is still being written.
YEI’s story is written every time a young person presses their first shirt, pours their first candle, designs their first logo, sells their first product, earns their first paycheck, pitches their first idea, boards their first plane, or realizes their creativity has value.
It is written by students, families, instructors, artists, entrepreneurs, mentors, partners, funders, volunteers, and community members who believe opportunity should not depend on a ZIP code.
Help create the next chapter.
Every donation, partnership, sponsorship, volunteer hour, and youth-made purchase helps create the next first.