Entrepreneurship Society to serve Latino community

The following is a story contributed by Alex Nassar. This is a fine example when business works with the Latino Community.

The Saint Joseph’s University Entrepreneurship Society will begin working with Philadelphia-area high school students to discuss the values the organization aims at propagating.

The Entrepreneurship Society will partner with Congreso de Latinos Unidos Inc., a north Philadelphia-based service organization aimed at serving the significant Latino population residing in that part of the city. Students in the Entrepreneurship Society will act as teachers and mentors to ninth-grade students at Edison High School in North Philadelphia as part of what has been dubbed the Exito Campaign. Students in any curriculum at the school can be a part of the program, which will be offered as part of Edison’s existing after-school enrichment.

Thomas Ferraro, ’09, president of the Entrepreneurship Society, said the idea was inspired by the fact that less than 20 percent of students in the Haub School of Business are involved in service programs through the university.

“The beauty of this volunteer opportunity is that it is connected to what we learn in business classes,” said Ferraro. “[Volunteers] are going to be using the practical knowledge they learned in business classes and teaching that to the students.”

Ferraro, as well as co-founder Brett Giroux, were presented with the opportunity to work with Congreso after contacting Beth Ford of Saint Joseph’s Campus Ministry regarding service programs specifically targeting business students.

This will be the first such program run by Congreso. A study will be done around the interactions between Saint Joseph’s and Edison students to determine whether the program actually benefits what Richard Johnson, program coordinator at Congresso, described as “at-risk students.”

“It can potentially open a St. Joe’s student’s eyes as much as it can an Edison student’s eyes to what the reality is here in Philadelphia as far as students who are born into inequity,” Johnson said.

Ferraro hopes that the service opportunity will have practical applications for both high-schoolers and college students.

“Sometimes the best way of understanding what we learn in class is to go out and teach others what we learned,” he said.

Ferraro said business ethics will be a large component of what the Entrepreneurship Society shares with high school students, in light of the recent exposure of large-scale corruption scandals surrounding executives like Bernie Madoff, a finance executive found guilty of perpetrating a scheme netting nearly $65 million.

“We wanted to show that the business school is not just about the money,” he said. “The reason why we jumped on to this is because we teach our members to have the highest ethical standards. We needed an outlet to bridge the business school into Jesuit ideals.”

Since initial contact between the Congreso and the Entrepreneurship Society earlier this academic year, steps have been taken in short order to launch the Exito campaign. On March 15, Ferraro and Giroux were guest judges in a business plan competition at Edison. Johnson said he hoped the program would start by the end of the academic year.

While Johnson said he would be glad to have consistent volunteers from Saint Joseph’s University, Ferraro hopes that members of the Entrepreneurship Society will take the opportunity more seriously.

“We want our volunteers not to just show up one time and then not show up again,” he said. “We want our volunteers to be people who are steady in the lives of the kids, providing the kids with hope and encouragement.”