Veterans entrepreneurship program to benefit from recycling initiative
Through an initiative called the Dream Machine announced today, PepsiCo and Waste Management intend to increase consumer recycling of beverage containers and at the same time support America’s disabled military veterans by providing substantial financial support to the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, a national program created and managed by the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University and available through five other prominent schools of business across the country, including the Florida State University College of Business.
PepsiCo and Waste Management hope to use the Dream Machine to increase the U.S. beverage-container recycling rate from 34 percent to 50 percent by 2018 and to provide funding to the Entrepreneurial Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), a national program offering free, experiential training in entrepreneurship and small-business management to post-Sept. 11 veterans with disabilities. The more people recycle bottles and cans in a Dream Machine, the more support PepsiCo will provide to the program to offer career training, education and job creation to returning U.S. veterans.
“Universities have the capacity to changes lives, and we are leveraging that capacity with the EBV program in our Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship,” said Caryn L. Beck-Dudley, dean of the College of Business at Florida State. “In our time of need, service men and women answered the call. Now it’s our turn.
“The large array of disabilities make it hard for veterans to start new careers as they re-enter civilian life,” she said. “The EBV program focuses on aiding their transition by giving them new business and life skills. The FSU College of Business is proud to offer the EBV program, in conjunction with our world-class entrepreneurship programs, utilizing volunteer help and student involvement to provide the life-changing experience of EBV. We are thankful to PepsiCo and Waste Management for their help in giving back to those who have given so much.”
The Dream Machine kiosks are computerized receptacles that include a personal reward system that allows consumers to collect and redeem points for each bottle or can they recycle. The Dream Machine recycling initiative will introduce thousands of new recycling kiosks in popular public venues to make it more convenient and rewarding for consumers to recycle on the go. PepsiCo has also entered into a partnership with national nonprofit organization Keep America Beautiful to encourage community involvement in the program by engaging nearly 600 local Keep America Beautiful affiliate organizations in communities nationwide.
Now a national consortium, the Entrepreneurial Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities opens the door to business ownership for U.S. veterans by helping them develop skills that relate to the many steps associated with launching and growing a small business. In addition to the Florida State University College of Business, the program is offered at Syracuse University, Texas A&M University, the University of California Los Angeles, Purdue University and the University of Connecticut. The training is provided at no cost to eligible veterans.
“The EBV program is in high demand by veterans because it is such a successful program,” said Randy Blass, director of the program at Florida State. “This partnership with PepsiCo and Waste Management means we will be able to expand the program to serve more veterans with disabilities. In our FSU EBV program, we utilize students as volunteers, which gives them a firsthand look at running an operation. This partnership also means they will continue to learn from EBV.”
The boot-camp training consists of three stages: an online curriculum for 45 days; resident training on campus at a participating university for nine days; and mentoring and continued support for 12 months or more. The majority of program graduates go on to start their own businesses, starting with each of their unique visions and building on the business and leadership skills developed through the program.
Partnering with the Entrepreneurial Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities is an extension of PepsiCo’s current partnership with American Corporate Partners, a nationwide mentoring program dedicated to helping veterans transition from the armed forces to private enterprise. The Dream Machines will be manufactured by Waste Management’s GreenOps, a subsidiary of Waste Management, and operated by Greenopolis, the first interactive recycling system that brings together online and on street technologies and rewards people for recycling their beverage containers in kiosks by allowing them to receive awards when they visit greenopolis.com.
Visit www.facebook.com/dreammachine for more on the Dream Machine initiative.
