By Walter Denmon

CertificationPoint currently provides college students nationwide with a viable resource to gain real-world experience irrespective of their career field with an initial focus on individual and small group coverage. The premise here is that closing the knowledge-to-experience gaps will assist in each student becoming more confident and self-sufficient and achieve maximum benefit from the program while completing college courses. An overall benefit of this program is in assisting college students to find their future career field of interest sooner through completion of real-world STEM-related (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) assignments in which they are also earning income. STEM-related paid work projects is currently a standalone course offered at colleges by CertificationPoint, but awarded work projects from our website can also be injected into college coursework by instructors as a graded group project.

At this time most colleges offer internships, online continuing education courses, service learning partnerships with businesses, and student work study. The Career Gateway Path Program offers a combination all the aforementioned programs. The Career Gateway Path Program runs 5-6 weeks, within a mentor-led group setting, at the beginning of each Fall and Spring semester. The beauty of the Career Gateway Path Program lies in helping students to learn to sell themselves to prospective real-world clients via RFP's and project bid submissions. Once awarded a project work tasking, in a mentored group setting, the students complete their various roles in the project and at completion the approved business partner submits payment to the group through the CertificationPoint payment gateway. A client review, group-based peer review, and a lesson's learned submission by each student is initiated following the completion of a work project. The review information collected is databased and made available to students nationally to use for future projects. Another offering that the Career Gateway Path Program provides is the ability for intra-regional collaborative project opportunities. The collaborative capability is only provided regionally at this point in time. An cross-regional initiative which allows students to engage with students at other colleges to complete a prospective business client's project is in the works. (example: Bossier Parish Community College/UCLA/Ohio State Univ. project collaboration).

The Career Gateway Preparatory Program program serves as a way of connecting college students with local, national and global businesses as well as a way for students to gain real-world experience. All work projects will have a qualified project manager and mentor to ensure both jobs and projects meet the required objectives of the businesses involved. Building trust between college students and hiring businesses is important when it comes to allowing students to complete business projects and CertificationPoint has a great working model. CertificationPoint, via the CGPP, will continue to help college students develop real-world knowledge in our defined list of important skill areas.

This is a patented process that has received venture funding and currently awaiting federal level funding. Once a student has completed the program they are able to continue working through the site for future for-pay projects as a college professional. A major gain for the student is the additional depth of tangible resume experience and gained networking opportunities while in college. As they say give a person a fish and they'll eat for a day, teach a person to fish and they'll eat for a lifetime. Ask your college about enrolling in the Career Gateway Path Program (CGPP) today! Colleges wishing to participate in this program, please contact us at: info@certificationpoint.org.

By Richard Thompson

Shopify, an e-commerce platform, has taken down an online store belonging to Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, for selling T-shirts bearing a swastika.

The T-shirts were available for sale on yeezy.com on Monday, after a local ad featuring Ye that ran during the Super Bowl in some markets directed viewers to the website.

On Tuesday, Shopify told CBS MoneyWatch that it was no longer processing orders for the item. The yeezy.com store was "unavailable," according to a message on its homepage.

"All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms, so we removed them from Shopify," the company said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.

The swastika was adopted by Germany's Nazi Party as its emblem in 1920 and is associated with Adolf Hitler.

Representatives for Ye did not immediately respond to CBS MoneyWatch's request for comment.

Ye formerly had a lucrative partnership with Adidas, which severed ties with his Yeezy brand after the artist made a string of antisemitic remarks.

"Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech," the company said in October 2022, when the two entities parted ways. "Ye's recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company's values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness."

Morningstar analyst David Swartz told the Washington Post at the time that Yeezy product sales had generated roughly $2 billion a year for the German sportswear giant, or nearly 10% of its annual revenue.

Adidas began its partnership with Ye in 2016, and made popular footwear under the Yeezy label. Adidas at the time called the deal "the most significant partnership ever created between an athletic brand and a non-athlete."