Isaiah Williams needed money—fast. Only 19, and about to become a father, he wanted to provide his child with everything he could. Williams heard about the Entrenuity Summer Business Camp, a faith-based program in the Chicago area created to teach African American and Latino high school students skills to operate their own businesses. …

Across the country in California, Opal Dillard was applying to the same camp. As a high school junior, she wanted to learn how to integrate her faith with the business world. …

With 350 applications and only 50 slots, the Entrenuity selection team chose both Williams and Dillard to attend the weeklong camp held at Wheaton College….Brian Jenkins, the cofounder and president of Entrenuity, has been running the summer camp since 2005. His hope is that the participants would apply the life skills they acquire during the week to earn income, but more importantly to learn how to be Christian leaders within their communities. …

The participants study Entrenuity's faith-based curriculum, Creating True Wealth, and take field trips to local businesses to see how they are run. Campers are then paired up in teams and assigned a business project. The teams must work together to create a business plan, and at the end of the camp a group of judges evaluates each plan. …

A devoted husband and father of three young kids, Jenkins, 39, has worked with over 1,500 students like Williams and Dillard since starting his Oak Park, Illinois-based not-for-profit organization. His…dream of teaching youth about business and Christian principles started in 1993 at Wheaton College. He volunteered to work with urban youth at Chicago's Lawndale Community Church and was overwhelmed by what he now realizes was a God-given thought: If these kids could have an opportunity to learn practical business skills, they would have much brighter futures. …

With the help of his colleague Duane Moyer, who is now part of Entrenuity's advisory board, Jenkins set off to launch his own business. He chose the name Entrenuity—a combination of the words "entrepreneurship" and "ingenuity"—because it evoked the qualities he hoped to inspire in his students. …

In addition to the weeklong summer camp, one of Entrenuity's greatest success stories has been Cornerstone Academy in Chicago, an alternative high school for at-risk youth. According to Jenkins, many students at Cornerstone faced academic or disciplinary challenges at other schools. But instead of seeing the students' past problems, Jenkins saw their potential. With help from Jenkins's staff of teachers at Entrenuity, those first 14 students learned marketing, finance, and customer service. After the students successfully completed the coursework, they launched their own mosaic art business. During their first two sales events, the students earned $500 in gross income. …

"I hope all my students learn that they can serve and honor the Lord no matter where they are," [Jenkins] says. "Whether they start their own businesses or are employees somewhere else, I hope they look at work as a way to honor God."