Matthews’ Painting Company awards $1,000 in Scholarships to two youths

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Staff Report
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From left, Derrick Matthews, Amanda Richards, Jamey Shirk, Jada Arnett, Jerome Karth, Roger Levitz, Jason Matthews, Melissa Matthews, Victoria Zorn and Trevor Owens
News Release

Matthews’ Painting Company awards the 2024 $1,000 Young Entrepreneur Scholarship to Jerome Karth and Wesley Yoder.

The community nominated many contestants across Kosciusko County. These two were chosen based on a review of their business plan and presentation of their business plan. $500 was issued to each winner with an ongoing mentorship program offered by the owner, Jason Matthews.

Jerome Karth

Jerome Karth is the oldest son of Samuel and Naomi Karth.

He’s a homeschool student doing mostly third-grade work but is doing fourth-grade math. For several years Jerome’s family has been working to create a pollinator garden in their front yard in Syracuse, inspired by needing to replace a dead tree, which left a large area of mulch.

In 2023, Jerome took over caring for the garden, researching which plants would be best to feed and house the many pollinators of the area. In addition to planting and expanding the garden, he also added a second ecosystem in the family’s backyard, and soon realized he wanted to share his knowledge with others.

In 2024 he decided to start a gardening business where he creates and plants basic gardens to help ensure pollinators have food, water and places to live. He has plans to have a blog to help educate others on why pollinator gardens are so important & he is already started a list of places that want to have a pollinator garden planted in 2025.

Jerome hopes to help inspire others to grow pollination gardens and plans to use his business to offer installment of basic pollinator gardens, specializing in native plants, to help others get started.

In 2025, he wants to start working towards having his personal gardens certified as wildlife habitats, due to the many animals and insects in need of places to live and grow.

From left to right in both pictures: Derrick Matthews, Amanda Richards, Jamey Shirk, Jada Arnett, Jerome Karth, Roger Levitz, Jason Matthews, Melissa Matthews, Victoria Zorn and Trevor Owens

Wesley Yoder
From left to right in both pictures: Derrick Matthews, Amanda Richards, Jamey Shirk, Jada Arnett, Roger Levitz, Wesley Yoder, Jason Matthews, Melissa Matthews, Trevor Owen and Victoria Zorn

My name is Wesley Yoder, I am a 15-year-old homeschooled student.

I love playing video games and am learning game design and programming skills in school and on my own personal time. I currently own The Lemon Patch, a fresh squeezed lemonade stand, and have been growing in this business for 7 years. I love being funny and making people laugh.
In 2023 my brother Jeremy and I won a local Youth Entrepreneur of the year award. We appeared on Live television with Summer at ABC 57 and were on the front page of the Goshen News as well. With our win we were invited to some big festivals and with the profits we earned we reinvested into our business and created a fresh squeezed lemonade stand with pneumatic machines and many different flavors in large 32oz cups.
In 2024 we set a goal to make $5,000 in profit on our vision board and we exceeded that goal. I have a few goals that I would like to achieve before the 2025 lemonade season. The first being to build a mobile trailer so I can travel easier to festival events. I already have the pop-up camper and have done the demo. I just need some help building it to the health dept codes. I also plan to rebrand with a new name and logo. I also would like to build a safe inclusive business outreach program that invites other autistic kids like me to be able to experience how to run a lemonade stand in an environment that suits
them best.

 

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