E4 Youth Wins Social Innovators Pitch Competition

E4 Wins Social Innovators Pitch Competition

AUSTIN, TX (September 26, 2013) – At the inaugural Social Good Summit in Austin this past week, the first ever grant from the Social Innovators Fund was awarded to E4 Youth, an organization that helps cultivate and prepare young people for careers in creative services.

The Social Good Summit is a global program where big ideas meet new media to create innovative solutions.

The Austin Summit, and this award, are unusual in that the fund and the competition for the grant were crowdsourced. Money for the grant was solicited through crowdfunding site Crowd Tilt (www.croudtilt.com) and the winner of the competition itself, dubbed the Social Good Summit Austin Fast Pitch Competition, was chosen by Summit attendees after hearing live presentations.

E4 Youth founder Carl Settles, Jr. made an impassioned case for the support of diverse creative youth in Austin. In addition to those in the audience, the competition was broadcast live on popular website Mashable.com (www.mashable.com/sgs).

E4 Youth also receives a year- long commitment by the Austin Social Good Community to help support their mission by offering various resources and helping spread the E4 Youth story.

That story includes E4 Youth’s mission to nourish creative talent that might otherwise go undiscovered. E4 Youth works with schools, parents and creative professionals to expose minority youth and young women to creative arts careers.

Settles has taken advantage of the rich and varied creative industries in Austin by bringing on board many of the city’s most notable talents from advertising, design, digital production and broadcast to serve as mentors and advisors.

“There’s such a deep pool here in Austin, and we are always looking for more individuals and companies to become involved,” said Settles. “That’s good for us, but even better for them, since these kids will be their future employees.”

For more information, go to e4youth.org.