BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS – High school students network at a “Pitch-a-thon” event in Oakland. Their leadership program is joining forces with SAGE thanks to a $25,000 grant.
Meanwhile, the Joseph Pedott Perpetual Endowment of San Francisco awarded a collaborative grant of $25,000 to SAGE California and the Future Leaders Institute. As a result, seven Bay Area high schools will participate in SAGE as part of their FLI (commonly pronounced “fly”) activities.
Now in its fourth year, FLI has enabled more than 350 high school students from Berkeley, Albany, Oakland, Alameda and San Francisco to make a difference in their lives and the lives of others through a curriculum titled “Passion to Action.” Founder/Executive Director Eve Cowen said FLI graduates and sends 100 percent of its students to college; 15 percent are the first in their family to attend college.
That FLI and SAGE were built for each other was evident last month at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, where 30 FLI students participated in a “Pitch-a-thon” event. They pitched ideas for social enterprises to local business leaders, who responded with advice and constructive criticism. The ideas moved some in the audience to tears.
Darryl Kelley, of Gateway High School in San Francisco, wants to raise money and start a group for Bay Area high school students to visit and fulfill the wishes of the chronically ill youth at the UCSF Medical Center.
Inspired by Ishmael Beah’s book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Remy Alexander, of Albany High School, spoke of saving child soldiers in Africa by creating a network of students to lobby the United Nations.
Monica Jackson, of Oakland High School, wants to create a network of high school students who provide an after-school program for elementary students “who maybe don’t have parents around,” to teach them how to cook for themselves. Nervous speaking in public, she sprinted off the stage while the roughly 150 in the audience applauded.
DeBerg hopes to expand SAGE to the 192 countries in the United Nations by 2015, the year set out in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. A $7 million grant proposal pending with the Jewish Community Federation would ensure this expansion, DeBerg says, but with the economy souring, he realizes it’s a tough time for some to invest in nonprofits.
Still, he says, SAGE is currently talking with leaders in Romania, Bulgaria, Northern Ireland, United Arab Emirates, India and Thailand about launching in these countries later this year or in 2010.
DeBerg sees the combination of social enterprise, service-learning and civic engagement as a winning formula. ‘But it’s not easy,” he said. ‘Trying to get faculty at both the university and high school levels involved in programs like this is like trying to move a cemetery. However, more and more of the innovative and entrepreneurial faculty are latching onto this concept.”
It seems to match national priorities, too—namely the Obama administration’s push via Change.gov as well as the San Francisco-based social entrepreneurship venture Change.org. Through the latter site, people highlighted innovative ideas; the 10 receiving the most votes get presented to the White House. SAGE finished outside the top 10, but DeBerg was satisfied that it received consideration.
His message to Obama? “Empower youth. It’s their future.”
