When Covid-19 hit Cole Stevens lost his job alongside thousands of other teenagers across Minnesota.
This propelled Cole to co-lead a successful campaign to change a discriminatory unemployment law impacting Minnesota highschool students, which resulted in students receiving $35M in pandemic aid.
That same year, Cole co-founded Bridgemakers with Walter Cortina. Their mission is to cultivate young leaders to live in “purpose, prosperity and power.”
Stevens says developing great young leaders is all about building self awareness.
“We ‘wake them up’ - asking young people questions that maybe no adult has ever asked them in 20 years of being in school, what are you good at? What do you care about? What do you believe needs to change in the world? And at the confluence of those things, there is a deep purpose that can be pulled out.”
“In simple terms, we just want to give access, power and resources to youth so they can make their wildest dreams come true,” said Cortina. “The only way to do it is to wake up those young leaders around the world. So that's what we spend our time doing.”
Cortina says Bridgemaker’s name came from looking at the city, and realizing that there are a lot of barriers between communities. He recalls a saying that “unwise people build barriers, wise people build bridges.” He says a big part of their work is building intergenerational bridges.
Stevens is proud of what they’ve accomplished at Bridgemakers, in particular their six-month entrepreneur fellowship, Bridge 2 Success.
“We have now totally revamped our entire program, we've totally revamped our entire approach to leadership development, bringing out that purpose in young people at the confluence of their skills, what they believe needs to change in the world and what they're most passionate about."
Bridgemakers work has already earned awards, including one from the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights.
Stevens says being a youth leader and the head of a non-profit comes at a cost.
“We either get up everyday and make it happen or the bills don't get paid and the change doesn't get made,” said Stevens. “It's one of those things that's actually maybe less glamorous, you know, the real story that a lot of people don't hear is that we also had to sacrifice.”
But he says the sacrifice is worth it.
“We could both say, this has been the most fulfilling thing that we've done, it's completely changed our lives in pretty much every way you can imagine,” said Stevens.
Stevens and Cortina are currently working on their next event, an exhibition of youth excellence on July 26th at Ice House in minneapolis.
“We're celebrating young leaders in our community, amplifying different ways to get involved and really just celebrating being young, gifted and excellent.”
Stevens says they’re also doing research and engaging with young people to understand their needs better, so that they can be the voice of change that they need.
Applications for the next Bridge 2 Success entrepreneur fellowship close on July 31.
(This story was reported as part of the Center for Broadcast Journalism's Summer Journalism Intensive, a training program for young aspiring reporters from diverse communities.)
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