Denise Korn

Youth Design

Grant Awarded: $18,000

Youth Design provides internships that expose high-school students with creative interest to the world of design, to a variety of work environments and career opportunities in design, and to what it means to work as a professional designer.

Youth Design is a unique mentoring program connecting inner city high school students with professional design mentors in the form of a paid summer job. The program introduces high school students to careers in the design profession.

The project will create an inspirational guidebook on why and how to mentor creatively talented inner city high school kids. It will have two components:

Stories — We will profile several world-class designers on how mentoring has impacted their careers and helped them follow their passion and realize success in the profession and how they in-turn have chosen to mentor young designers today. We will also include stories from a few of our Youth Design student graduates and share how the program has helped them grow into designers themselves.

How-to-guide — A how-to-guide offering inspiration, facts and advice on effective mentoring. The guidebook will be used in conjunction with our existing Youth Design materials, created in 2008-09 to promote, introduce and support growth of our Youth Design program across the U.S.