Cedars Network members had the opportunity to lead 9 young men and women through a four month social entrepreneurship training program. Previous to this training, the students were all trained through a partner organization in skills such as woodworking and tailoring clothes.
Our members brought in principles for whole-person development, inviting the students to reflect on ways their community could benefit from their projects and not primarily on how much money they can profit. Each week, they would learn a principle and by the end of the training they had to complete a community survey to discover if any of their project ideas were viable.
One of the students had the idea of making his own clothes and selling them. We helped him price out how much the materials would cost and set a price for his labor. He quickly saw as he was conducting his community survey that his idea was not viable because there were already clothes available for a much cheaper price in the community.
In the end, the students finished the training with a celebration where they offered their finished products to the community to both show them off and attempt to sell them. These young men and women grew in budgeting skills, community-development thinking, and how to dream up new ideas when their initial ideas did not work out. They discovered a new, counter-cultural way of approaching business that could spread goodness throughout their communities one sale at a time.
