2 Teens Create Entrepreneurship Initiative to Spark Interest of Middle School Girls

Live Workshop with The Wallet Project

Last week, a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas approached Parkland Talk to tell us about a new national initiative for middle school students.  Here are the details.

By Sarah Kathuria and Kirthi Manivannan

Doctor, lawyer, engineer. The three main career options given to impressionable kids.

For years we thought those were the only acceptable paths to take after high school, with you picking one of the three or you’re automatically looked down upon.

Even in school, we only saw activities like the science fair or coding classes advertised.

This led us to feel restricted as to what we could do and explore, regardless of the options out there. Young kids have the capacity to learn and absorb so much information but are confined to the core subjects when really they should be given the freedom to learn and explore all that they can. Now, we have grown to know that those thoughts aren’t true.

We are Sarah and Kirthi, the Co-Founders of The Wallet Project. I’m Sarah Kathuria, a current Junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School from Parkland, Florida and I’m Kirthi Manivannan, also a Junior from Rochester, Minnesota.

When we started talking to each other about our future interests, we began to think of everything we felt was missing from our early education, everything we didn’t get a chance to explore when we were young girls. That’s where the business aspect of our interests came in. We knew when we were younger there was nothing at school to teach us basic things like how to file taxes, or even how to deal with money in general.

Identifying the same gaps in our schooling, we were inspired to take action. We realized we wanted to provide an easy, engaging, yet effective way for young girls to learn about the basics of the economy, business, and overall ways of money management.

After hours and hours of brainstorming, our organization, The Wallet Project, was born. Through this national initiative, we aim to provide an educational and inspirational platform for middle school girls to spark their interest in business by fostering a healthy money mindset, learning proven entrepreneurial strategies, and adopting a growth mindset.

We achieve this by hosting live, interactive workshops where these middle school girls can not only learn the basics of business but also ask any questions they have that will be directly answered by a female entrepreneur.

So far, with our first workshop series, we were able to impact eight middle school girls from all around the country and even interview a successful entrepreneur for our youtube channel.

At the next workshop series held in February of 2021, we already have sign-ups all the way from Australia and still, have plans to market ourselves to local middle schools such as Westglades and Sawgrass Springs to impact as many young girls as much as possible.

With our free, virtual workshops, learning important business strategies that are helpful regardless of the career path young girls have an interest in has never been easier, even in the middle of a global pandemic.

The workshops are available for all middle school girls and grades five and nine, and we would love to provide them with the support they need through this platform.

Vennela, 6th Grade, said, “My favorite thing about this workshop was doing activities related to the concepts we covered. I learned so much about entrepreneurship’s basic concepts and terms through fun and engaging conversations and projects. ”

Find out more here: thewalletprojectt.com and sign up button to register for our next workshop series.

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