Drew Schantz is one of those 20-something-year-olds who make you feel like a total slacker. We caught up with him on the Daily Detroit Happy Hour podcast to talk about his new project: the VentureSchool, a new nonprofit “micro charter” focused on entrepreneurship.
Schantz, who previously worked for Washington D.C.-area educational nonprofits, says he’s been working with community groups and investors to help get the school up and running and touring prospective students around the Detroit startup ecosystem.
The aim is to launch its first class of around 35 students in fall 2018 in Detroit’s Denby neighborhood, on the city’s northeast side — and also have the neighborhood be its focus for new business activity by students.
“We’re relying on this growing trend of place-based education to fuel the entrepreneurial aspect of this school,” Schantz says. “We want to treat Detroit as our classroom as much as the VentureSchool learning space is. So the plan is to have students paired with mentors and internship opportunities that they will participate in every week.
“We’ll be going out into different startups across the city, different nonprofit organizations, established business organizations to use that as an extension of our learning environment.”
As always, you can listen to the full episode above, or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or the Podcast Detroit network.
And thanks to our new pod sponsor, Bamboo Detroit!
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