Weaver is a global expert on social entrepreneurship and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network. She conducted the first large-scale empirical study on the social, economic, and legal activities of social enterprises in the U.S. and is the Founder of Weaver's Social Enterprise Directory. In 2023, she joined the Global African Descent Social Entrepreneurship Network sponsored by the Biden-Harris Administration.
Over 20 states in America have instituted policies that require high school students to take financial literacy courses. These policies aim to prepare students to manage finances, debt, and credit card usage: activities that are critical to their social mobility and economic well-being.
This education is necessary, but it is incomplete. In addition to financial literacy, students also need to understand social entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship education, in general, can prepare students to design businesses that address consumer needs and offer job creation opportunities in their communities.
Social entrepreneurship—the process of using entrepreneurship to combat social problems—provides an even greater value by focusing entrepreneurship skills on alleviating social issues like poverty, inequality, climate change, racial tension, and more. Examples of social enterprises include Warby Parker, the glasses company that donates a pair of glasses to someone who cannot afford them with each purchase from a consumer; The Village Market, a marketplace that offers products made by Black entrepreneurs; and Newman’s Own, the brand that sells food and beverages and donates all profits to charity. In my volume Social Entrepreneurship: A Practical Introduction, I attempt to educate readers, including youth, on how to ensure their businesses can reap profits while also working toward the public good.
Social Entrepreneurship is the Future of Business
A study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in 2020 reports that most entrepreneurs see and feel the weight of the problems of the world and want to address them. However, most do not know how to do so. Social entrepreneurship is viewed as a medium for alleviating social issues that are unaddressed by government, businesses, or charitable organizations.
A recent report states that Millennials and Gen Z desire work that aligns with their personal values and to work on their own terms. They have grown up in a time when societal problems are at an all-time high and social media usage is so common that these problems are on display in the palm of their hands via their cell phones and laptops every day. Social entrepreneurship education would grant them the tools needed to design, launch, and scale social enterprises.
How to Educate High School Students in Social Entrepreneurship
- There are various ways that high school administrators can advance social entrepreneurship education.
- Knowledge: My book Social Entrepreneurship: A Practical Introduction and other resources can be used in classrooms to teach students to design, launch, and run a social enterprise. High schoolers may be eager for opportunities to work with these curricula.
- Training: Online training programs for social entrepreneurs like those I have organized can be tailored to audience needs for implementation in U.S. high schools and beyond. Short but intensive training programs can boost skills quickly and deliver extra support to students who have decided they are strongly interested in pursuing entrepreneurship.
- Inspiration: High schools should invest in inviting guest speakers that share their social enterprise success stories with students. Organizations like B Lab and Social Enterprise Alliance would be great resources to identify speakers that are running high-profit social enterprises that are indeed transforming lives.
- Competitions: Our youth have amazing ideas! Entrepreneurial pitch competitions are a valuable way to allow students to share their idea with an audience, learn how to design their social enterprise with mentors, and then launch it with funding they can win in the competition.
- Exposure: A number of successful and popular social enterprises like Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory in Burlington, Vermont, and Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York offer tours of their facilities. These tours provide an opportunity for students to see how their products are made, explore the history of the organization, and outline opportunities for students to work or volunteer.
Social entrepreneurship is the future of business. The better we can prepare future leaders to run businesses that not only create value for themselves and their consumers, but that advance quality of life for society as a whole, the more likely they are to succeed. High school administrators who follow the above guidelines can help create the conditions necessary for their success.
This writing was originally published through the Scholars Strategy Network.
U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One on August 14, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. Trump is traveling to Long Island to tour law enforcement facilities in Nassau County and rally support for local Republican candidates ahead of the upcoming midterm elections
Travel Far Enough, You Meet Yourself
Is it possible that our President has simply not traveled enough?
Born and raised in Queens and attending Fordham University in the Bronx, Donald Trump has no record of traveling outside New York until he was over 20, when he transferred to a college in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. Were his formative years amiss, then, in his learning about other places and other people?
Is his view akin to the famous New Yorker cover by Saul Steinberg, an illustration of the United States with New York City as the epicenter of the country and the Hudson River the border of the known world? We can now at least add Washington, D.C., and Mar-a-Lago to the map of “the realm.”
Our President has now traveled some, but what we recommend is another kind of travel. Not a state-sponsored trip or a venture to scout locations for future Trump Towers. This would be a genuine travel experience, enriching and eye-opening, showcasing other cultures and ways of living.
It will extend far beyond viewing military parades, hobnobbing with such “understanding” world leaders as Kim Jong Un, or taking tea with the King.
WHERE, then, should the President go? As Elon Musk’s Starship spacecraft is not yet ready to take passengers to Mars, perhaps he could explore our own vast country?
Maybe he could travel to “flyover country,” the farming states, where his ying-yanging tariffs and trade restrictions have played havoc with rural economies. Or possibly to California, number one in homeless U. S. citizens, and while there, regale homeless veterans (approximately 32,500 nationwide) with tales of his brave exploits invading and bombing foreign countries.
Or he might tour the Great Lakes, and rename the other four?
WHEN should he go? This will be tough, as he is very busy building his ballroom and renaming bodies of water.
How about a trip in early November, around the midterm elections? Despite the long-discredited accusation of widespread voter fraud, it would be reassuring to know he might be so caught up divvying out ladles of soup in a soup kitchen somewhere that he wouldn’t remember to deploy the military for “election security.”
HOW will he travel? He should definitely not take his Qatari-donated, newly renovated 747, especially after last time, when he had to be smuggled off clandestinely in a catering truck. It’s unlikely any traveling companions, like the Secretary of State or of the Treasury, are going to fall for the ruse a second time. Besides, we may need those people. No more decoys!
Perhaps the President could fly commercially, although this likely would expose him to undue suffering. Without gold bathroom fixtures and maple wood floors, the trip will be no “Luxury Experience.” If only he still had his “Trump Shuttle,” bought with a massive loan he later defaulted on, saying then, “I’m smart. I got out at a good time.”
Considering the potential pitfalls, maybe it’s best the President travel incognito, disguised perhaps as an elderly woman wearing a lot of bronzer.
Wherever, whenever, however: our President needs a vacation.
Moreover, we need a vacation from him.
If the President refuses our travel suggestions, here’s another idea:
Let’s get him a pet! He has never owned a pet. As we know with our children, pets teach essential life lessons: compassion and empathy; they instill a sense of responsibility. There is a well-established connection between those who can care for a pet and those who can care for people.
So, which pet should we choose? A puppy? A kitten? A boa constrictor?
Imagine, the President may even decide he likes having a pet. After all, what is more obedient than a well-trained dog, besides possibly the Cabinet? And what is more docile than a sweet kitten, other than plausibly the Supreme Court?
The President may even become more mellow with a pet afoot and less likely to slap tariffs on our allies, or attempt to annex our neighbors, or bully our Congress. (Realizing, of course, a bully requires active participation from the bullied to maintain his status.)
Maybe we should do both: get the President a pet and devise a travel plan for him. (Do you think we could possibly convince him to leave his phone at home?)
Let’s go for it! After all:
Travel far enough, you meet yourself. (David Mitchell)
And for our President, that would likely be the most profound discovery of all.
Amy Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."