The Trust Your Crazy Ideas Challenge was launched four years ago as a partnership between the Junior Achievement of Greater New Orleans (JA), the Brees Dream Foundation and The Idea Village. The competition teaches entrepreneurial thinking to students and fine tunes their business pitches throughout several mentor sessions before a final round pitch during New Orleans Entrepreneur Week.
New Orleans Entrepreneur Week (NOEW) wrapped last Friday with four student teams from pitching their “crazy idea” to a panel of judges for chance to win $10,000 in continuing education funds.
The now statewide competition featured teams from Baton Rouge, Shreveport and New Orleans. New Orleans area teams represent eight schools, including Archbishop Shaw High School, Cabrini High School, Holy Cross School, Lusher Charter School, Mount Carmel Academy, Isidore Newman School, Archbishop Rummel High School, and St. Augustine High School.
Judges included LookFar President Chris Reade, CC’s Coffee House CEO Celton Hayden, and a few others. After much deliberation, Kelly Yu from Lusher won the challenge for her crazy idea,
Moshee, a language exchange app that pairs people learning languages with fluent speakers of that language.
Two Mount Carmel Academy students, Isabel Caballero and Madeleine Erickson, won the New Orleans portion of the final day.
For more information about the challenge, visit trustyourcrazyideaschallenge.org.