The Southwest Minnesota CEO program is hosting a social honoring sponsors and friends on Monday, March 4 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the ANX building at Pipestone Systems, 1801 Forman Drive in Pipestone.

The Southwest Minnesota Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities (CEO) program offers entrepreneurship education that seeks to prepare people, especially youths, to be responsible, enterprising individuals who become entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial thinkers and contribute to economic development and sustainable communities. The CEO program is much more than a textbook course. Rather, students are immersed in real life learning experiences with the opportunity to take risks, manage the results and learn from the outcomes.

This program is endorsed by seven school districts within southwest Minnesota (Pipestone, Luverne, Edgerton, Southwest Christian, Adrian, Ellsworth and Hills Beaver Creek), and includes students from six of the seven school districts. To students from Pipestone Area Schools were part of the inaugural class for the 2018-19 school year. These students meet every morning from 7:15-8:45 for the entire school year at one of the six school districts’ local businesses. They sometimes travel over 50 miles in order to get to class. Students are touring local businesses, hearing from speakers, working with mentors and establishing lifelong contacts.

The first half of the school year they created their own for-profit business as a group, which yielded over $33,000 in revenue and netted nearly $12,000 in profit. Now they are working on launching their individual businesses and will have a trade show on May 15 to present their business. The program is funded by local businesses and community members from within the six school districts.

During the social the students will share their experiences with and help spread knowledge about the program.

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor or just want to learn more, please RSVP to swmn.ceo@gmail.com by Feb. 22, 2019. The program’s current board members are: Kevin Paulsen, First Bank & Trust; Mike Fey, Fey Industries; Stewart Kreun, DeBoer Chevrolet; and Joe Douty, Wilson Manufacturing Co.