Students in Charlotte-area A.C.E. Academy cook and prep for Juneteenth debate
With school officially out for summer, A.C.E Academy, a Charlotte-based charter school, gears up for its Young Moguls entrepreneurship program.
The Young Moguls, which began June 16, is a weeklong daily camp and immersive experience offered to 50 A.C.E. students from ages 11 to 14 with strong entrepreneurial focus.
“They are learning skills that they’ll be able to use for the rest of their lives,” said Laila Minott, the superintendent at the K-8 school. “We want to teach them from a financial perspective how our dollars can impact our voice in the community.”
The 2025 theme dives into what is happening culturally in our communities. The featured camp activity on Thursday is the Juneteenth debate.
Juneteenth commemorates the day when the last group of enslaved people in 1865 found out they were free, following the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier. For this second annual debate, the theme encourages students to discuss today’s social concerns and issues.
Students will use the prompt: “Is there value in us being connected with our dollars versus does it really matter?”
The goal is to motivate discussion about bringing the community’s money together as a way to protest the elimination of many federal- and state-level policies supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Students will conduct research to discover what happens when communities are unified with their purchasing power versus not unified. During the debate, the students will ponder whether collective financial action really leads to change within certain companies. Or does it even matter to protest against these stores?
“Everything we do always has a financial basis,” said Minott. “When you look at some of the boycotts for these stores, what does that mean? Is it relevant?”
Young Moguls are expected to understand the impacts of working and supporting smalls businesses versus not supporting these companies.
What else happens during the Young Moguls camp
A mix of sweet and spicy aromas waft in the school’s kitchen as students tested their culinary skills with international flair. The camp hosted a cooking class and students were divided into cuisine teams: Mexican, Greek, Asian and Jamaican.
In partnership with the “Can U Cook?” culinary team, each group is tasked to create a drink, main entree, and dessert — inspired by an assigned country. Each team received a head chef to guide them but it was up to the students to do the cutting, frying, and cooking of dishes they were unfamiliar with. The determined Moguls tackled this challenging task in just under two hours.
This class is designed to aid the students to work collaboratively, creatively to express themselves in a unique, fun way. Afterwards, students critiqued and graded their peers’ dishes on a scale of one to five.
Young Moguls are diving deeper than the traditional fundamentals that appear when beginning your own business.
Rising seventh grader Amun Bey participated in the Mexican cuisine team. “We’ve been learning that tariffs make us boost prices up.”
Later in the week, the group will be taking a trip to a skydiving simulator, iFLY to work on fear-conquering and overcoming challenging tasks. Monday, young moguls traveled to Happy Kat Candle & Gifts to learn the underlying start-up techniques of a business.
After completing the week-long program, students will meet monthly on Saturdays to maximize their businesses’ potential. Students who have successfully completed a business plan, receive start up money to get the groundwork laid for their emerging business.
“I’ve been given more opportunities that I think would not be available at other schools,” said four-time Young Mogul Jazlyn Torrage.
Jazlyn is a rising eighth grader who already has hosted her own pop-up shop at the Taste of Charlotte festival and feels prepared to take her business to the next level in the upcoming years, she said.
“We want to develop these kids by taking their passions and turning them into a money making business,” says entrepreneurship director Shawn Smalls. “When you really look at it, what do we go to school for? To learn to make money.”
All proceeds raised from these events goes to the students and their businesses, Minott said. After four years, students have generated nearly $35,000 in profit from their new businesses.
More about A.C.E.
Founded in 2014, A.C.E Academy prides itself on three pillars for teaching: academics, character and entrepreneurship. The K-8 school strives to show young students how to maximize their talents with the goal that someday they can become their own bosses.
Minott, the school’s co-founder, has a strong entrepreneurial background and a deep love for assisting youth in the Charlotte area. Before founding the Academy, Minott created a youth entrepreneurial company alongside her husband serving the east coast for over a decade.
“We [also] wanted to serve our community, and we pretty much fell in love with it and turned it into a business,” she said.
Next year, the Young Moguls camp plans to expand and will be accepting students who do not attend A.C.E academy, broadening the outreach of the program.
Read more about the Young Moguls and A.C.E. Academy’s programs here.
Want to go?
The Academy is opening the debate to the public to promote the students’ ideas and opinions on a broader scale.
What: Second annual Juneteenth Debate
Where: A.C.E. Academy, 7807 Caldwell Rd., Harrisburg, NC
When: 11:30 a.m., Thursday, June 19
