October 20, 2009

Good News Tuesday: 17-Year Old Entrepeneur Kalief Rollins


It is Good News Tuesday! Today, we bring the focus to 17-year-old Kalief Rollins is president of Phree Kountry Clothing. The shirts have positive messages ranging from ending gang violence to embracing education.

The young brother took home a $10,000 grand prize from the National Youth Entrepreneurship Competition for his business selling custom T-shirts with inspirational designs. Rollins competed against 27 finalists and 24,000 initial high school entrants for the award, given by the nonprofit Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Another serendipity of the contest for Rollins was an all-expense paid trip to the White House to meet President Obama. Check out this video of the meeting:



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Rollins says Phree Kountry Clothing's first big seller depicted President Obama. The shirts, designed by his brother Anthony, 22, "have leadership themes and positive messages."

Rollins offers catalogs through phreekountry@yahoo.com and in the next year, he says, "we plan to get our shirts into events like fairs, swap meets and farmers markets. ... We want to get our shirts into different stores that they can be sold at as well. We want to get someone famous to endorse it."

The young brother has the endorsement of this blog. Does he have your endorsement as well?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great story Villager. I'm going to add this to Tradition of Excellence. I hope to find more stories of positive young men and women because we all know they are out there.

Thanks.

Unknown said...

Symphony - I'm very happy to be a participant in this weekly meme!

DNLee said...

this is great. thanks for sharing.

Unknown said...

Danielle - Have you considered participating in this weekly meme on your blog?