With the school year about to start up again, it seems apt to mention an important movement in the Kernersville area of NC called Business Voices. Lack of proper funding is sadly a pretty common issue for a lot of schools across the country, and the consequences are more serious than teachers having to buy their own markers etc.
Business Voices exists to solve that problem on the local level, uniting business professionals of all kinds to leverage their collective networks to get things done. Often coordinating faculty with parents more effectively, and organizing the right types of fundraisers can go a long way in putting things on a better course for students.
Business Voices Helps Fill The Funding and Income Gaps That Can Impede Learning.
A few of the folks in particular that have spearheaded the campaign have powerful stories of their experiences meeting with principals, PTA boards, and even talking with students.
In one school there were quite a few students coming in each morning without having eaten breakfast, and without clean socks or shoes. When this team got involved, it was able to work directly with faculty to organize a breakfast club where those students could show up a little early and have breakfast and orange juice, something parents were able to pool together to pay for.
Fill My Ride is another successful campaign that began in 2016. The idea turned fundraising into a fun competition, with participants aiming to fill their cars with donations and supplies for schools. After the public portion of the event where the cars are shown off, those same cars drive the supplies to the schools, where volunteers unload.
But Helping Students Goes Beyond Supplies; It’s Also Information.
The biggest decision any young person faces is what kind of career they want when they get older. It’s pretty tough to make that decision at it is, but particularly when there’s not really much information for students about what entering a given professional really entails — or what a day in the life of that job is like.
Career fairs have been a repeated success in the Winston Salem and Greensboro areas, with business professionals volunteering to man tables and answer questions for kids. How better to know what it’s like to be a lawyer or web designer, for instance, than to talk to one from the area? This helps kids decide what really sounds interesting to them, and set realistic expectations.