The Power of Video Games to Heal America’s Heroes, A Surefire Way to Keep Students in School and More


How Games Are Helping Veterans Recover from Injury, Polygon
U.S. Army Major Erik Johnson discovered the healing power of video games firsthand while recovering from a horrible car accident. Today, the occupational therapist serves as Chief Medical Officer for Operation Supply Drop, a nonprofit that taps the therapeutic benefits of technology to help veterans and active service members recover from physical injuries, mental struggles, memory and cognitive problems and more. Sure, it’s unconventional to put a Nintendo Wii controller in a soldier’s hand during therapy, but the results are undeniable: reestablishing “themselves as an able body person who can enjoy things they used to enjoy.”
What Can Stop Kids From Dropping Out? New York Times
The massive amount of outstanding student loan debt might not be the biggest problem when it comes to higher education. What is? The fact that almost half of college freshmen fail to earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. Dropout rates are highest amongst minorities, first-generation undergrads and low-income individuals, but through advisory sessions at the first sign of trouble, classes that offer immediate feedback, tiny grants of just a few hundred dollars and more, George State University is helping these traditionally poor-performing students achieve higher graduation rates than their white peers.
The Bag Bill, The New Yorker
A self-described child of hippie parents, Jennie Romer fondly recalls visiting the local recycling facility with her parents. The weekly trips clearly had an impact on Romer, who’s spent much of her adulthood fighting for plastic bag bans. Success has been plentiful in California, with San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles all passing ordinances against the notorious environmental menace. Now Romer has her sights set on implementing a fee on plastic bags in the country’s largest metropolis. Will she add the Big Apple to her list of triumphs?
Editors’ note: Since the publication of the New Yorker article, the New York City Council has approved a 5-cent fee on plastic bags. 
MORE: The High-Energy Activity That’s Healing the Invisible Scars of War

How Do You Keep the American Dream Alive? End the Digital Divide

More than one in five Americans don’t have access to the Internet. For the majority of the disconnected, the biggest issue is cost. As CEO of EveryoneOn, a nonprofit working to close the digital divide, NationSwell Council member Chike Aguh lobbies policymakers in Washington, generating awareness of low-cost options for connectivity and partnering with corporations to provide computers and Wi-Fi to American families. Aguh has helped connect 200,000 families in the last four years, and he plans to help 350,000 more by the end of the decade.
NationSwell spoke to him about what he’s learned from serving a disconnected and forgotten group of Americans.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
It comes from a professor I used to have — his name is Harry Spence — when I was in Cambridge. A public manager extraordinaire, he managed a number of public bureaucracies from housing authorities to school districts. I always call him a mix of Peter Drucker [the mind behind modern corporate management] and Confucius [the ancient Chinese philosopher]. The first day of class he said, “Does the staff exist to support the manager, or does the manager exist to support the staff?”
Great managers — and by extension, great leaders — support their staff, not the other way around. Your job is to help them do their job. Particularly as I’ve moved into leadership, I’ve realized more and more that my job is making others better, and in many ways, the work that I do at EveryoneOn for the communities we look to serve is about helping them be better. It’s not about me saving them. This is about giving them the tools to empower and save and change themselves. I think the same is true of leadership, and I want an organization that can operate without me: that is the goal. I think it is very easy, particularly in a very hero-centric view of social change, to see a social entrepreneur or a CEO or a leader as the sole change. That’s not true. It’s a movement of people, not a person.
What’s your favorite book of all-time?
I would probably say “Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63,” by Taylor Branch, which is really one of the best histories of the Civil Rights movement that there is. It’s easy to forget where we were 50 years ago as a country. In many ways, it shows us what’s possible and also what’s left to do. The movement was a movement of people, not a person. Of course, Martin Luther King figures very heavily, but there are many other people whose names we forget and don’t say enough.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
It was as part of my work at EveryoneOn with ConnectHome. One of the communities we work with is the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. I think we know, but it’s important to say, Native American communities on reservations are the most underserved parts of our country. So to be able to go there with one of our tech partners, Github, from Silicon Valley and give out 136 computers to families there, take them through digital literacy workshop and have Thanksgiving dinner with them was one of the proudest and most inspiring moments I have ever seen.

Aguh’s organization, EveryoneOn, helped provide more than 100 computers to members of the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma.

What inspires you?
I, in many ways, am a prisoner of my biography. To give you a sense of my background, my parents are from a small, out-of-the-way village in Nigeria that most Nigerians themselves have not been to and will never visit. None of my grandparents went past middle school. My dad grew up one of nine, my mom grew up one of 11. What changed life for both of them was the opportunity to come study here in the United States at public universities. My dad got a once-in-a-lifetime scholarship. He went to the University of Texas in Austin; my mom went to Rutgers. I always say, without education and the economic opportunity of this country, I would not be here, quite literally. I consistently feel like I’ve been given more than I could ever repay, but I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying. It’s what I’ve tried to do and I’m going to continue until I can do it no more.
When I was first taking on this role, I began to think that my country can’t do what it did for my parents for others without the Internet. What has happened over a generation in my family, that’s in many ways because of the American Dream. The only way that’s still possible is with everyone on and having access to the Internet. Eighty percent of kids need the Internet to do homework every night. I can tell you stories of families who go to the parking lots of hospitals or libraries to use the Internet. Ninety percent of job applications are online, particularly as you go up the income scale. Ninety percent of college applications are preferred or required to be done online. So, just with those three data points, if you are not online, you are economically and educationally marginalized. The Internet is the platform on which the wealth of tomorrow is being built through apps and tech companies. For that wealth to be shared by everyone, you need everyone on it: not just as consumers, but as creators.
The next Mark Zuckerberg is a young kid in Albuquerque, in Brooklyn, in L.A. We don’t know who they are, but we’re never going to find them if we don’t give them access to be creators on the Internet.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
WATCH: How Brooklyn’s Largest Housing Project Is Getting Its Residents Online
 

The Room Full of Recliners That’s Saving the Lives of Drug Addicts, An Investment in the Poor That Pays Off and More

 
Overwhelmed by Overdoses, Clinic Offers a Room for Highs, Boston Globe
The number one cause of death among Boston’s homeless? Opioid use. Overdoses are such a common occurrence that they disrupt workers’ daily tasks at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program. In response, the organization is making a drastic, controversial move: opening a room where addicts can come down from their highs while under medical supervision. Some claim that it’s a plan that will simply enable users; others, including the Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine, believe it’s an effective way to get the drug pandemic under control and reduce the number of fatalities.
Free Money Lifts People out of Poverty, and That’s an Investment That Pays for Itself, Tech Insider
Despite America’s vast wealth, more than one in five children grow up in poverty in this country. While many believe that giving the less-fortunate money increases laziness, North Carolina discovered that Cherokee tribe members receiving up to $6,000 a year from casino revenue gave parents the ability to save money and pay bills on time — all the while continuing to work the same amount as they previously did. Not only that, their children experienced a reduction in mental health problems, fewer behavioral problems and improved performance in school.
Crowdsourcing the Future of a Social Movement, Stanford Social Innovation Review
You’ve probably heard the popular saying, There’s no “I” in team. While running a major crowdsourcing campaign, funders and nonprofit leaders in the LGBTQ community learned just how powerful collaboration is at maintaining social progress. More than 14,000 ideas were collected from residents of all 50 states, creating a vast data set about LGBTQ issues — something that’s cost prohibitive for one organization to source, but that will help guide the entire movement for years to come.

For Education to Improve, Emotional Learning Must Be Emphasized

In his 20s, as a Teach for America fellow in a Washington, D.C., classroom, Nick Ehrmann, found himself reading Shel Silverstein’s poem “The Little Blue Engine,” which satirizes the well-known kid’s story of the Little Engine That Could who repeats, “I think I can, I think I can,” to power its way up a steep hill. In Silverstein’s version, instead of reaching the summit, the train slips backwards and crashes: “If the track is tough and the hill is rough, / thinking you can just ain’t enough!” the poet writes. Ehrmann took the lesson to heart and, after completing graduate work in sociology at Princeton, founded the educational nonprofit Blue Engine, its name a nod to the poem.
As CEO, Ehrmann takes the hard look at the shortcomings in our nation’s secondary schools, rejects pat inspirational messages and instead provides students with critical support to succeed in higher education. Blue Engine’s most important innovation is the introduction of teaching assistants (known as BETAs), mostly recent college grads, in the classroom. By breaking up large classes into small groups, teaching assistants personalize lessons for class performance and learning styles. With 89 BETAs in seven schools today, the program has been shown to nearly double the number of college-ready students — a 73 percent increase at three schools, according to New York’s 2013-14 Regents test data — and cut the number of failing students by one third.
On a recent weekday morning, Ehrmann, wearing a scarf against the 34-degree chill, plopped down at a table at Au Bon Pain in Lower Manhattan’s Financial District. NationSwell spoke to him about rethinking the education sector, leadership and fatherhood.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
There’s an expression that we have here that we have to earn the right to do this work. I think there’s a pervasive illusion that the fact that you have good intentions is going to lead to positive outcomes. And in actuality, it can lead to feelings of entitlement and arrogance and a lack of partnerships — true partnerships — in the communities in which we work. So from the minute we step foot into the office or to a school or to a classroom and sit across the table from a young person, who are we to say that we deserve to be there? We have to earn the right to be there in the eyes of young people, teachers, parents and each other. That’s number one. It feels like that’s the most grounding way to honor the work and not lose sight of what’s most important, which is achieving results.

Nick Ehrmann (far right) stands with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama at the College Opportunity Summit in Washington, D.C., Jan. 16, 2014.

What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
Number one is broadening the evidence base in how we define success, continuing to embrace academic achievement outcomes, but also incorporating measures of student growth, social-emotional learning, learning climate and the ways that schools can and must nurture the growth of young people more holistically. Students aren’t just data points. They’re people, and I think we’re seeing a really reductionist narrowing of what success means into standardized test scores at the expense of things that help young people grow and learn and develop independently in their lives. I think the pendulum is swinging back.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
Dude, I have like 5,000 books. Hmm…
What’s your favorite movie of all-time?
I have three boys under five [years of age]…we’re watching “Cars 2” and “Wall-E” for the 14th time, and actually, I just watched the Star Wars trilogy — the original three — with my four-year-old, and he was glued to the set. It’s just amazing.
What’s your biggest need right now?
Sleep! No, I think I’ve got it: a relaxation of the assumption individual organizations can or should scale to solve social problems alone and to encourage the essential forms of collaboration in systemic partnerships, where the most promising organizations become part of a much broader theory of change in how problems get solved. Look at Malaria No More, for example. There was no single organization that would have set themselves up to become the global malaria response. Too often, I think, entrepreneurs face pressure to scale to the size of the problem alone.
What inspires you?
Working with an incredible team. Having the chance to be part of an organization that sees the strengths in young people, instead of their weaknesses and deficits, and builds from that strength without taking credit for it. And the sliver of possibility that this work is going to have a dramatic impact on how students learn across the country.
In turn, how do you try to inspire others?
It’s easy to lose sight of what drives us and unites us as an organization, when the work itself is so hard. And part of my role is to consistently hold that vision and sense of possibility, just grounded in young people, to hold that front and center, so we can recharge.
What’s your perfect day?
I thrive on routine. I’m just going to describe my current day. A perfect day: I’d say it starts with not waking up three times in the middle of the night, step one. Step two: Cook breakfast for my boys. Get in a quick run in Central Park. It’s equal parts being in the field at schools and managing teams. Getting home in time so that Annie [my wife] and I could put the boys to bed. And eking out 36 minutes of “Homeland,” before I fall asleep on the couch. #LivingTheDream.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
I was a musician for most of my life. I come from a family of musicians. I play cello, so I grew up doing classical and jazz ensemble work most of my life. I miss it. That would be part of my perfect day, if I had the time. I started around [the age of] four and put it down in my early 20s.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this work?
To not to apologize for thinking big. And to not allow caution or fear to limit people’s sense of what’s possible.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This article has been edited and condensed.

Meet The Educator Who Accurately Predicted Technology’s Potential to Transform Student-Driven Learning

Elisabeth Stock founded PowerMyLearning, a national nonprofit that leverages technology to transform teaching and learning in low-income communities, in 1999 — a time when the cloud was still in the sky, the search engine Google was only a year old and most still logged on via a dialup connection. Even then, Stock saw software’s potential to boost students’ learning, but she didn’t want to replace classroom teachers with lessons on a screen; instead, she wanted the technology to strengthen the learning relationships among students, teachers and families. Today, Stock points to growth in math proficiency (and great gains amongst children with learning disabilities) at PowerMyLearning partner schools across the country compared to similar schools.
NationSwell sat down with Stock at the organization’s offices in the Garment District of Midtown Manhattan and discussed her outlook on leadership, learning and racing a Chevy Impala with her dad.
What’s the best advice you’ve received on leadership?
There’s this expression of the mirror and the window. What really strong leaders do is this: when things go right, they look out the window to see who they can give credit to. And when things don’t go well, they look in the mirror, and say, “What did I do wrong?” Really lousy leaders do the reverse. When things go badly, they look through the window and ask, “Who can I blame?” And when things go really great, they say, “Oh, look at me! I’m so great!”
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
I’m very excited about how the technology is becoming much more user-friendly for teachers to do data-driven instruction and support student-driven learning. I also think we’re at a particularly exciting moment in time because the prevalence of cell phones and smartphones in the inner city has gotten really high, which provides the ability to combine texting with other things we’re doing to help parents stay in the game with their kids’ education.
What’s on your nightstand?
It’s depressing. You really want to hear it? I’m reading “When Breath Becomes Air,” which is a book about a young doctor [Paul Kalanithi] who gets diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer and decides he’s going to write a book before he dies. And then the other one I always have is “Thinking Fast and Slow,” [by winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Daniel Kahneman].
What’s your biggest need right now?
PowerMyLearning is in the process of developing our national board. Finding people who want to get involved in our work and will bring their networks, hearts, heads and wallets — all those pieces that will help us get better — is probably our number one need.

At the annual PowerMyLearning Innovative Learning Awards, Elisabeth Stock, far right, is pictured with former board member Ellen Schubert and program participants Jennifer Peña and Kateleen Lopez.

What do you wish someone had told you when you first started this job?
The key thing is to surround yourself with good people and to surround yourself with people who really believe in what you’re doing. You may meet somebody who has the best skill set for what you’re looking for, but if that person is not super excited about what you’re doing, it’s not worth it to bring them on board. They don’t have to work the same hours as you, but they have to be as committed and passionate as you.
What inspires you?
The thing that inspires me is this really strong sense of unfairness that exists, that if you are born in a certain zip code, you have different outcomes than someone else. It just seems, to me, so wrong, and I’m very driven to change that.
What’s the accomplishment that you’re most proud of?
I think it’s two things. We’re all about developing the capacity of people, so I’m very proud of helping teachers become better teachers and helping parents know how they can be more helpful for their kids at home, and then, seeing my staff do the same thing. We have people on staff who have been here for a long time and seeing them grow and develop is just so rewarding. If you can do that, you can do anything. All these other things we’re trying to make happen (like kids having better academic outcomes and socio-emotional learning), will happen if capacity is developed.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
Growing up, my father was a psychiatrist, so you’d assume that he’d be this kind of quiet, docile, glasses-wearing kind of guy. As my mom described it, she married Clark Kent but got Superman. The other side of my dad was that he was really into car racing. He could not wait until I turned 16, so I could start racing with him. He started me off taking the Chevy Impala out on weekends to race around cones in a parking lot, and eventually I graduated to a real track going 100 mile per hour on the straightaways. I think that my interests in how things work physically (I studied biomechanical engineering as an undergrad), a lot of it came from my dad.
What does your perfect day look like?
Every day is a perfect day. I don’t complain a lot. I mean a perfect day is when everyone is healthy and putting in their all, including my kids and my husband. You go home and everyone’s happy, and at work, you’re strengthening your own relationships. I’m not going to say it’s a day where you hear about some big grant or we get state test results back and our kids have done well, because those are just easy days. Those aren’t necessarily the best days. The best days are when you work hard, right?
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This article has been edited and condensed.

The Zero-Energy Way to Produce Food, How to Build Hope in a Poisoned City and More

 
What’s Growing On at The Plant?, onEarth
On the southwest side of the Windy City, a former meatpacking plant is now the home of The Plant, an incubator of 16 food start-ups. Tenants work together in order to be as sustainable as possible — literally, one business’s trash is another’s storage container, recipe ingredient or energy source. The long-term plan for this urban agricultural experiment? Sprout numerous Plants across the nation.
Life as a Young Athlete in Flint, Michigan, Bleacher Report
In a city under siege by its poisoned public water system, hometown heroes are using basketball to raise awareness and kids’ spirits. Kenyada Dent, a guidance counselor and high school hoops coach, uses the game as a tool to motivate his players towards opportunities outside of the struggling city; another coach, Chris McLavish, organized a charity game featuring former collegiate and NBA players that grew up in Flint. The activity on the court doesn’t make the tap water drinkable or erase the damage already inflicted, but it does bring much-needed joy to a city overcome with despair.
Truancy, Suspension Rates Drop in Greater Los Angeles Area Schools, The Chronicle of Social Change
A suspension doesn’t just make a child miss out on a day of learning, it also increases the likelihood that he’ll go to prison. Because of this, many school districts in the Golden State now implement restorative justice practices — a strategy that uses reconciliation with victims as a means of rehabilitation — instead of traditional, punitive disciplinary measures. Suspension rates and truancy filings have decreased, but racial discrepancies still exist when analyzing discipline statistics.
MORE: Suspending Students Isn’t Effective. Here’s What Schools Should Do Instead

The Impoverished Often Choose Between Buying Furniture and Food. This Group Makes Sure They Have Both

Dr. Mark Bergel hasn’t slept in a bed since 2008. But thanks to his efforts, many of his neighbors have.
While volunteering at a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that delivered meals to impoverished residents, Bergel noticed that many families lacked enough beds for all of a household’s residents — or they didn’t have any beds at all. Learning that many of those living in poverty forgo basic furnishings in order to put food on the table, he started A Wider Circle.
The organization’s largest initiative, Neighbor-to-Neighbor, accepts donated furniture and distributes it to low-income residents across the Washington, D.C., area. A Wider Circle also operates the new Wraparound Support program, which enlists up to four volunteers to focus on one individual or family as they seek to rise out of poverty.
Watch the video above to see why Bergel sleeps on his couch and how A Wider Circle is making life better for almost 16,000 adults and children each year.
MORE: As Extreme Poverty Increases Nationwide, This Texas County Finds the Secret to Drastically Reduce It

How One Local Government Intelligently Invests in Local Business, A City That’s Keeping Housing Affordable for All and More

 
Berkeley Votes to Boost Co-op Economy in the Face of Gentrification, YES! Magazine
The co-op already thrives in Northern California. But in an effort to keep locals in the area (which has an extremely high cost of living), the city council in Berkeley, Calif., is throwing even more support behind the model. Similar to initiatives already passed in New York City; Madison, Wisc.; Cleveland; and Richmond, Calif.; Berkeley’s move provides tax incentives, support for worker-owners and financial aid to small businesses — making it easier for co-ops to become powerful job generators.
The Miracle of Minneapolis, The Atlantic
The Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., metro area has a higher median household income than New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago. Despite the Twin Cities’ wealth, affordable housing remains in reach for most residents. Unusual plans that encourage rich neighborhoods to share tax revenue with middle class and low-income residents —  a move referred to as “fiscal equalization” — means that the American Dream is alive and thriving in Minnesota.
Giving Students What They Really Need, Bright
No matter how good a school is, a child’s learning suffers when he or she is subjected to chronic stress. But schools often add to or ignore kids’ anxiety and tension, instead of teaching tips and strategies to diffuse it. Turnaround for Children* is teaching social-emotional skills, such as stress management and self-regulation, in the classroom, enabling all kids (namely low-income ones and those that suffer from abuse or neglect) to be high achievers in an academic setting.
*Editors’ note: Pamela Cantor, founder of Turnaround for Children, is a NationSwell Council member.

A House That’s Actually Affordable to Those in Poverty, Stories of Innovation from Coast to Coast and More

 
This House Costs Just $20,000 — But It’s Nicer Than Yours, Fast Co.Exist
Is it possible to build a house that’s cost-effective to someone living below the poverty line? The answer is yes, according to students at Auburn University’s School of Architecture, who worked on the design and construction dilemma for more than 10 years. Last month, they revealed two tiny houses in a community outside of Atlanta that cost just $14,000 each.
How America Is Putting Itself Back Together Again, The Atlantic
As writer James Fallows says, “As a whole, the country may seem to be going to hell.” But as he’s discovered while visiting various towns across America in his single-engine prop plane, there’s actually a groundswell of renewal and innovation already happening — from impressive economic growth in an impoverished area of Mississippi known as the Golden Triangle, to an investment in the Michigan public education system and a creative movement in more than 10 cities where artistic ventures are being celebrated.
Here’s What Happened When This School Made SATs Optional on Applications, Mic
Along with prom and getting your driver’s license, taking the SAT or ACT is a teenage rite of passage. But that’s no longer the case for some college-bound students. In a bold move, George Washington University made standardized test results optional for undergraduate applicants. The positive outcome: A more diverse candidate pool, including a sharp uptick in applications from African-American, Latino and first-generation college students.
 
MORE: Meet the Courageous Man Who Has Housed 1,393 Chronically Homeless Individuals in Utah
 
 

Meet the Self-Starting Millennial Who’s Mentoring the Next Generation of American Leaders

Daquan Oliver has entrepreneurialism in his blood. When he was a cute third-grader living in New Rochelle, N.Y., his mother Alison found out that he’d been wandering in a nearby housing project selling copies of “The Money Saver,” a free newspaper stuffed with coupons, door to door. “He’s trying to make his own money,” said one woman who had handed Oliver a five-dollar bill, “and I applaud him for that.”
In middle school, Oliver used his enterprising spirit to talk his way out of assignments. “With him, everything’s negotiable,” one teacher vented to Alison. But as a single mother who’d gotten pregnant at age 17 and was now working low-wage jobs around the clock, Alison wasn’t going to let her son get away with skipping homework. “You have two strikes against you. One, you’re African American. Two, you’re an African-American male,” Alison warned him. On top of his schoolwork, she assigned monthly book reports and made him copy words from the dictionary and write his own definitions in a composition notebook.
By senior year in high school, Oliver ran his own business. He bought Pop-Tarts, Capri Suns, candy and chips in bulk at Target, and three “employees” sold them to classmates, netting $1,000 in profit each month. Four years later, in 2014, as he was set to graduate from Babson College, a Massachusetts business school well known for incubating startups, Oliver founded the nonprofit WeThrive, to bring together middle and high schoolers and college students for near-peer mentoring, a model where both parties can connect emotionally over present challenges, not just distant objectives. Now 24, Oliver works in Los Angeles’s Silicon Beach and hopes WeThrive participants internalize the same lessons in entrepreneurship that helped him break the expectations of his upbringing.
For kids 13 years old and up, WeThrive’s mentoring program consists of at least eight weekly, 90-minute sessions on entrepreneurship. So far this semester, more than 100 have signed up to work with college students from Columbia, Cornell, Syracuse and the University of California, Los Angeles. Oliver thinks children learn best when doing, so the course is focused on launching an actual business. By the second class, groups “choose a problem that has a product or service-based solution,” and they have until the end of the semester to turn it into a working business model, Oliver says. In the past, one cohort founded UNI, an anti-bullying nonprofit, and sold water bottles that changed colors based on temperature and were emblazoned with the slogan “Be the Change.” Another started an apparel company called Difference that prints T-shirts with multicolored bar codes as an expression of individuality.
A typical WeThrive class might focus on finding a target market. Avoiding business jargon, the mentors ask: What what kind of customer would like to buy their product? A silent leader (who is discretely chosen by the mentor at the beginning of each class) manages the discussion and keeps everyone focused without calling attention to herself. Ninety minutes later, the kids fill out learning logs, writing one piece of knowledge they gained that day, how it applies to their life and how they will implement it through the next week.
Oliver wants students to learn goal setting, public speaking and personal finance, and lessons on these topics are reinforced week after week — like his mother’s vocabulary teachings — until they become habit. It doesn’t matter whether a business model finds financial success. What’s important is that those involved learn how to lead a team, assemble a team and can speak publicly about their business so that others believe in the concept and the vision.“This isn’t about creating a business; it’s about honing skills required to enter a lifestyle, so to speak.”
Oliver also wants to see them develop an emphasis on doing social good. So he seeks out participants who would have founded WeThrive if he hadn’t done it already, the students who are passionate about giving back but need a platform to get engaged.

WeThrive brings together middle and high schoolers and college students for near-peer mentoring.

Although Oliver starter WeThrive just two years ago, the idea for the nonprofit started percolating when he was a 14-year-old, a time that can be described as the worst of his life. His mother lost her hourly job, and while she looked for new work, she sent Oliver to live with his grandparents. The family soon didn’t have cash for deodorant, so he started dodging sports practice at a summer enrichment program. Several times, he and his mother skipped meals.
“He started getting that hopeless feeling. He was worried about the next move, how things were going to change, if they were going to change at all,” Alison recalls. “The situation, it kind of placed him in a position where he had to be a grown-up for a little bit. And when I say grown up, I mean as far as his thoughts, as far as processing things.”
Late one night, Oliver couldn’t fall asleep. He felt sick, sweating in his sheets. Normally a happy-go-lucky kid, his mind kept replaying how many hours his mother worked and how little her hard labor paid off. But in a sudden epiphany, he realized it wasn’t his mother’s fault. A structural barrier had “always been holding us here.” He promised himself that he would overcome it and return home to assist those like him.
That moment was where Oliver first came up with his definition of entrepreneurship, a broader approach — a lifestyle, really — beyond simple business advice. “Turning obstacles into opportunities,” he phrases it, adapting Niccolò Machiavelli’s definition from “The Prince.” “Every time I see a challenge, I think entrepreneurially about it and think my way through it.”
Jasmine Robinson, leader of the WeThrive chapter at Cornell, at Clubs and Organizations Fest.

As WeThrive expands across the country, Oliver is looking for a way to beef up the curriculum’s incorporation of the latest technology, such as offering intros to coding or hosting off-site discussion via Slack. And he’s introducing more behavioral metrics to see if the lessons are changing behavior. Are kids reading more for pleasure, for instance, and do they feel they have a positive influence on their peers? Oliver admits it will be nearly impossible to gauge whether WeThrive has an impact on grades or graduation rates, since there’s a myriad of factors that affect academic success, but he hopes to determine whether entrepreneurship is becoming part of his students’ daily lives.
One can wonder if, in creating WeThrive, Oliver simply put together the education he wished he had on those tough days at his grandparent’s house in New Rochelle. But Oliver disputes that. “Maybe if I had this program, I wouldn’t be able to do the things that enabled me to live out my dreams.”
Oliver has seen more ups and downs than most who are twice his age. He knows what failure looks like; it surrounded him in his neighborhood and his high school classes. But at WeThrive, he’s getting — and sharing — a glimpse of success.
MORE: This 23-Year-Old Has Figured Out a Way to Make Kids Want to Attend Summer School