Entrepreneurship as a Builder of Multiple Skills
“I’m encouraging young people to become social business entrepreneurs and contribute to the world. Contributing to and changing the world is a lot of fun.”
Muhummad Yunus, Founder, Grameen Bank
Youth Social Entrepreneurs at the non profit, Peter Wulff Center work diligently towards solutions in their small ways. Their work is usually carried out in collaboration with others. The team of volunteers adopted the problem of food insecurity to be beneficiaries of their fundraising. A creative method of fighting this problem was to raise funds for families who are suffering from insufficient funds to buy food. The team sold Hummus for food insecure families here in the Chicago area raising about $2500 over the last few months. The funds were donated to local families in the Chicago area. However on a visit to India $200 left over from these funds was distributed to children from an orphanage in Bareilly, India. The children at the orphanage were delighted with the attention and gifts. This gift was possible with the collaboration of entrepreneurs Mona Juneja of Bear Connect and Paul Frey of Sales Harbor who volunteer at the Warne Babyfold to teach children english and computers every week. They cleverly engaged 2 more volunteers to assist them and widen the educational outreach to more students. Mona and Paul are digital nomads each running start ups that require creative thinking. They embrace ideas that power their work and use their experiences to implement change. Their service allowed teenagers Krish Nara, Jack Weed, Prabhgun Kaur, Prabhjet Singh and John Dawson to push their humanitarian efforts into making a difference in the lives of children at this orphanage across the world. According to Bill Drayton,"The core psychology of a social entrepreneur is someone who cannot come to rest, in a very deep sense, until he or she has changed the pattern in an area of social concern all across society. Social entrepreneurs are married to a vision of a better way of helping young people grow up ".
Youth social entrepreneurs in the Barrington area in Illinois have raised over $325,000 over the last 20 yearswinning awards and making an effort to transform lives through their humanitarian outreach. Meanwhile advancing their skills and knowledge of the world and people around them by their service and collaboration with entrepreneurs like Paul and Mona. "It's a lot of fun" says 13 year old Krish Nara.
Join us at the Peter Wulff Center to experience the joy of accomplishing positive change.