A bus will be cruising through South Florida as a mobile workstation. Renovations were made to a former transit bus to make a classroom inside with Wi-Fi in order to offer programs and classes on the go.
The GBDC Entrepreneurship Institute, a Boynton Beach-based nonprofit business incubator, launched the Mobile Entrepreneurship Leadership and Training (M.E.L.T.) bus in Boynton Beach recently. The mobile unit features services designed to help local youth, small businesses and the homeless population. The idea for the bus came from Annette Gray, founder of the nonprofit incubator.
"This is not an original idea by a long shot," Gray said in a statement. "Mobile solutions are on the rise; what is unique, however, is the intended use of the bus."
Programs that will be offered include games, audio and video equipment, resume writing and job search assistance, business workshops and technical assistance, youth life skills programs, financial literacy assistance, homework assistance, leadership mentoring, college preparation and a cloud account.
The bus will initially travel throughout Palm Beach County and is expected to expand into Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
"The M.E.L.T bus is an extension of the work we are currently doing," Gray said. "It has been a labor of love, which took the better part of four years, lots of patience, dogged determination and support from community partners and friends to make this dream a reality."
The goal of the M.E.L.T. bus is to expand the mission and reach of the organization, reduce unemployment and homelessness through self-employment.
"There is an abundance of resources in South Florida; however, there is a segment of the population who has transportation and other socio-economic challenges, which prevents them from benefiting from those resources," said Alterraon "Al" Phillips, GBDCEI's chairman of the board. "The M.E.L.T. bus is designed with this in mind."
Visit GBDCEI.org.
