The Jesse Helms Center’s Free Enterprise Leadership Challenge, hosted sessions this summer at five colleges in four states including Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.

FELC is a life changing experience for high school students from diverse backgrounds. They learn about entrepreneurship, free market economics, personal responsibility, principled leadership, and corporate and personal philanthropy. During the five-day session, students learn from principled speakers, engaging group sessions, and company competition.

The company competition engages students in small groups. They form a company that provides actual products or services and turn a true profit using real money.

The group sessions are comprised of a variety of interactive lessons including John Templeton’s Laws of Life Essay contest, Lincoln–Douglas style debates regarding current topics, and a persuasive speech contest. This year’s topic is freedom of speech.

The third component to the FELC program is exposing students to first-hand advice from (and enabling them to ask questions of) professional and principled business leaders.

Students also participate in presentations of a Virtual Trade Mission, a research project to promote a better understanding of trade in the global economy.

This summer, more than 300 high school students graduated from the FELC program. These students join the 9,300 FELC alumni from all over the world who have completed the challenge over the past 23 years.

To learn more about this program and interactive online free enterprise programs, please visit jessehelmscenter.org or freeenterprisenow.org.