In June 2022, a woman came to the Idea Accelerator Bootcamp with a frustration: more than 80% of the small businesses on the town’s main street are owned and operated by women, but fewer than 1 in 20 local elected officials and local employer-based business executives are women. As a community with a long history of being racially divided (and recent tragedies that reinforced those divides), she decided that Brunswick, Georgia needed all of the women in the community to come together, work together, and advocate together if we were going to experience meaningful change. At the Bootcamp, she decided to launch a business designed to break down those barriers and inspire what she called “an ecosystem of possibility” for women in our community. By November 2022, she had over US$10,000 in sponsorships for a womxn’s conference to be held in March 2023. The conference ended up with over 150 attendees, 12 powerful and diverse local speakers, and a charge to continue this work of advocacy and connecting people where only silos existed before. In a town with a population of 15,000 people, 150 attendees was a phenomenal success. Her business will continue to grow as an education center, advocacy center, and hub for empowerment in our community.

When the Lucas Center launched in March 2022 with a mission to create opportunities for economic empowerment across the region through entrepreneurship, there was a chasm of trust between the existing players in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and the people who needed the support the most. Another program would be meaningless and fail in its mission if it could not bridge that chasm. Building trust did not take a long time, though, and hinged on two core principles:
1) Listen first to creatively solve problems. We heard two problems facing entrepreneurs: One was “I have an idea and I don’t know where to start” and the other was “I have a business and I’m really great at (BBQ, sewing, etc.) but I don’t know anything about business.” The Idea Accelerator Bootcamp was designed to solve the first of those problems. By tackling one problem at a time, we filled a gap in the ecosystem and were able to have a clear promise that we knew we could deliver.
2) Design for diversity. The population of our community is highly diverse and to achieve our mission we knew we had to be able to reach everyone. All the programming at our center is free, and we run programs at different times (evenings, Fridays, weekends) to reach people who work multiple jobs or who need childcare. Many do not have access to internet or computers, so having in-person sessions with breakfast, lunch, and dinner included creates more opportunities for inclusivity.

The Lucas Center for Entrepreneurship started the Idea Accelerator Bootcamp in Brunswick, Georgia and plans to expand the Bootcamp to other communities across the region. Coming in May 2023, the Center is partnering with a neighboring county’s development authority to offer the Bootcamp in rural McIntosh County with a special focus on ecotourism and hospitality entrepreneurship. Hosting the Bootcamp regularly there and in seven other neighboring counties with large rural populations is planned for the next two years. The Lucas Center runs five different programs at this time, and has plans to expand each of them across the region of Coastal Georgia. The Center is also a founding member of Innov8GA, a consortium of entrepreneurship centers across the state. We hosted the spring conference for Innov8GA, and have significant interest across the state in training other centers to implement the Bootcamp.