Newtown native Elizabeth Tarshis is currently serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nicaragua, specializing in the Entrepreneurial Education Project, and is working to raise money to support the group's National Business Plan Competition by its start on November 13.donate.peacecorps.gov/donate/project/national-business-competition-2016.

According to Ms Tarshis, who graduated Newtown High School in 2010, the fundraising goal is more than $13,000 to support housing, feeding, and transporting 129 Nicaraguan students to three days of training events and activities for the competition, which offers the opportunity for the students to present business plans they have been working on all year in the program.

"This will be the first time many of them have ever traveled outside of their home towns, gotten to meet people from different parts of their country, or have ever seen/stayed at a hotel," Ms Tarshis wrote in an e-mail from Nicaragua on October 25.

According to the Peace Corps, the program begins with students working to create and present business plans at the local, municipal, and regional levels before being chosen by judges for the national entrepreneurship competition.

The theme for this year competition, according to the Peace Corps, is "Building a Better Tomorrow."

As of Wednesday, November 2, the effort had raised $8,500 online at

"I work with the Ministry of Education to train teachers and teach students about entrepreneurship," Ms Tarshis wrote. "The premise of the course we have developed is to motivate students to improve their critical thinking and expand their imaginations to create an innovative business idea that they mold as they learn the components of developing a business plan. The class culminates in the business plan competitions at the end of the school year in November, when the students have the opportunity to present their plans and compete against one another on a schoolwide, municipal, regional, and national level. The three winning teams at the national level receive seed money to actually start their businesses."

According to Ms Tarshis, students in the program range in age from 16 to 23.

"This course is different than anything else they are offering in the public school system right now," Ms Tarshis said. "The classic teaching style in Nicaragua is dictate and copy. The entrepreneurship class encourages the students to interact with one another, sharing ideas and opinions, and challenge the status quo.

"There are some students who live in the most rural areas of the county that don't have access to electricity or running water and walk hours just to get to school, yet they arrive ready and excited to work, and think of amazing products," she continued.

The National Business Plan Competition will begin November 13, according to Ms Tarshis, so fundraising efforts are due before it begins.