The Market as a teacher for Youth Social Entrepreneurs

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” – Dr. David Viscott

The market is a challenging place to sell your products as any business knows. But the marketplace is also an incredible source of learning when combined with service. The challenge with service learning creates an environment of possibilities where individuals can hone skills, innovate and learn. Different levels of networking build during this process with new ideas emerging when working with diverse cultural, geographic, socioeconomic and intellectual groups.

Over the years of while mentoring youth at Chess Without Borders and now at the Peter Wulff Center on different service learning projects unique possibilities opened up regularly raising $314,050.00 for local and global charities since 2000.

Over the years it was apparent that ideas incubated inadvertently while working together but on further examination a deeper characteristic of service learning seems is to stimulate natural creativity, improvisation and innovation into the thinking process. The driver of these traits is the fierce motivation children acquire to achieve success because of the difference they feel they can make. The rewards for helping others is more gratifying and fulfilling as 12 year old Ethan Gagliano said once, " I feel like doing more when I do this for others". (Ethan was cleaning up after a fundraiser and he said this after him mom remarked that she wished he did this at home) !

Another example of the interaction of social entrepreneurship and innovation was how 2 young teenagers who raised funds for a roof for an orphanage in Southern India. Prashant and Pranav Ramachandran were visiting their grandparents home in Southern India when they visited an orphanage next door in order to distribute chess sets. As they were teaching chess they noticed the roof of the orphanage was leaking. The teachers there said this was because there were no funds to fix the roof. Determined to help they returned home to the States and raised $700 to repair the roof. Just as important was the educational value of this enterprise because these teenagers learned that the orphanage was hosting child victims of the Sri Lankan civil war and they shared this knowledge with the team. Similarly, 10 year old social entrepreneur Jack Weed raised funds for a Christmas lunch families of ex prisoner's in Chicago. While distributing gifts and 2nd hand winter clothes he saw how little these children had and how a meal meant so much to them. The following year Jack collected more items to distribute as his presence among the families developed his understanding.

This simple act of intellectual curiosity, leadership, determination and care was propelled by their education in service learning and the interaction with marketing, public relations, networking and team work. There are many other examples of students developing their talents or skills in unexpected ways.

Currently 11 year old Jack Weed and 12 year old Krish Nara work in a team as Project Managers for food charities. They sell items that artists create such as "Humanitarian Hummus and Zeins magical spices to benefit families who need help with groceries. They have enlisted artist Sree Nara a Barrington High School senior to sell her art work donating 30% to charities around food.

Previously sales of Zein's Magical spices helped a team of 15 individuals travel to South Korea on a mission trip. Many of these individuals were children of fathers who served in the Korean war and their return to where their fathers served was deeply meaningful made possible by a team of social entrepreneurs. During the fund raising several children interacted with some of the travelers like Sara Edwards learning about the sacrifices made by people like her dad in the Korean war. "I had no idea about this war, said 15 year old Dimetri who was on the team to raise funds to help volunteers travel to Korea. Service learning through the act of raising funds in a challenging market accomplished multiple tasks such as enabling volunteers travel to Korea, educating students about the sacrifices made during the Korean war and creating a network of new volunteers.

For more information visit: www.peterwulfcenter.org or email at peterwulffcenter@gmail.com