Social Enterprise Launch
Design and launch a small social enterprise that addresses a community need while developing entrepreneurial skills. This project combines business fundamentals (market research, budgeting, marketing) with social impact goals. The enterprise should be sustainable enough to continue beyond your direct involvement or create a model others can replicate.
Building your Award:
Review the example goal, Assessor and reflection to help you build your Gold Project
For my Gold Project, I will launch a social enterprise providing affordable tutoring to elementary students from low-income families: conduct community needs assessment and design the service model, recruit and train 6 volunteer tutors from my high school, pilot the program with 10 students and gather feedback, refine based on feedback and expand to serve 20+ students weekly, then document all processes, train successors, and present the model to our school board as a replicable program.
Business teacher, community organization partner, or entrepreneurship program mentor
Starting this tutoring enterprise taught me that social impact and sustainability must go together. Our first model was completely free, but we couldn’t afford materials or retain tutors. Introducing a sliding-scale fee (free to $5/session based on family income) actually improved our service because families felt invested and tutors felt valued. I learned to listen deeply and when parents told us homework help mattered less than building confidence, we redesigned our approach. Training my successors was harder than I expected; I had to document everything I’d learned intuitively. But seeing the program continue after I stepped back showed me real success: the impact outlasts my involvement. The school board presentation led to discussions about scaling the model district-wide.
