Educating through entrepreneurship

I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship (duh!) and also of education, and when you put the two together, general goodness ensues. I'd written about BUILD in a prior post - they help under-resourced, under-motivated kids finish high-school and get into college by turning them on to entrepreneurship. I've been a friend, and a huge admirer, of BUILD for a few years now, but this year I felt that I can walk the talk and go beyond donations to actually volunteering as a 'business' mentor to a group of budding entrepreneurs.

The premise, in brief, is that the mentors meet weekly with their team and help them through the business planning process (which BUILD uses as a lever to help their academic goals) and at the end of the year they get to present their plans and possibly win 'seed' funds. We've had a few 'getting to know you' meetings in preparation for starting on the real 'business' work soon.

It's been a really fun and eye-opening experience:
- It's great to see so many mentor volunteers. Understandably, many are fresh out of college, as life seems to get busier as you get older (due to kids and careers in equal measure) until you get old enough to be in charge of your schedule again.
- The kids are very smart. In some ways they're just like the kids in prep-schools in their obsessions, but unfortunately, there is a substantial knowledge gap and that seems to bring down their confidence and they don't think they're smart enough.
- When asked what they'd do if they had $10 million in the bank, every single one would spend a big chunk helping their families and helping others, very few talked about getting specific material goods like a Ferrari.

One of the most encouraging signs I saw was that in every one of the 'business' discussions we had (the last one was on the most profitable way to sell s'mores), the kids are very passionate about quality. They were vehement about not wanting to sell low-quality goods just for increasing the profit (s'mores with less chocolate? nooo!). While almost all of them said they were in this class to learn about making money (which is a great thing), they seemed to have an innate desire to go about it the right way - money is good, but not at the expense of others. Making jokes at the expense of your classmates is perfectly OK though (they seem to be pretty aware of not crossing the line into meanness).

It is inspiring to see the essential goodness even in kids who have less-than-comfortable, or even acceptable, home lives - especially when we're flailing through a financial meltdown caused by pervasive greed and are despairing about the lack of ethics in the business world. There's hope!