STAT BOX
Ayele Shakur, Executive Director of BUILD’s Greater Boston program, and six of BUILDinBoston’s student entrepreneur teams galvanized SheGives members at our recent SheGives nonprofit event night for BUILD, which was generously hosted by Ropes & Gray.
“We engage kids in something they grow passionate about, and then transform them into students with discipline and focus,” says Ayele Shakur, who has lead the Greater Boston program since its founding here in 2011.
BUILD focuses high-risk students on academics by piquing their interest in entrepreneurialism. BUILD helps students develop a business from the ground up — from idea to planning, pitching and launching a real business. As they build knowledge, confidence and profits they make the connection between school and success. Founded in Silicon Valley, after a demonstrated success rate in the high 90’s% of getting students graduated from high school and into college, BUILD is currently in four Boston public schools.
The specially made — and utterly delicious — custom SheGives cookies shown in the picture below were made by BUILD’s Cookie Boss team, and we were also wow’ed by the six teams who skillfully pitched us their products: One World Jewelry, Attach-A-Bility, Tempo, Picture This, Lite Up and Blind Vision.
Excited by our BUILD night, a number SheGives members and friends have already visited BUILD’s incubation space in downtown Boston and have volunteered in various capacities. SheGives member Farah Darliette Lewis volunteered as a judge at BUILD’s recent Showcase and “What a gift it was — to me,” she said, “to be inspired by the BUILD kids and see them gaining confidence and enthusiasm as they practiced their pitches in front of us.”
BUILDinBoston made it onto the SheGives slate because of its impressive track record in turning high school kids with very high drop-out “markers” into college students, and its ambitious but achievable goals to extend further into Boston.
“Entrepreneurship is the hook, but college is the goal.”
Read more about BUILDinBoston
SheGives connects committed, inquisitive, engaged funders with a slate of diligenced nonprofits in the Greater Boston area. We provide members with relevant data about the nonprofits in our portfolio and an opportunity to meet directly with our nonprofits’ Executive Directors and senior staff in small settings that promote in-depth q&a’s and, ultimately, informed giving. Giving is personally driven, but because we give side-by-side our collective impact is greater.
Check out photos from the SheGives BUILDinBoston night below. Photo credit: SLY Photography
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