by Anea Schaffel
At the age of 18, I found myself on an airplane to beautiful South Africa where I spent my gap year after high school volunteering. For a year, I lived and worked in a children’s home in the province Kwa-Zulu Natal, and it was absolutely amazing! My co-volunteer Melanie and I organized many holiday programs, assisted with homework, took care of up to 14 children each for a couple of days, helped out in the office and so much more. I wouldn’t trade the experience in for anything.
Flying down there, I subconsciously expected to be the one giving to those 130 children with a background of abuse or neglect. Instead, I learned more about happiness, inequality, love, grief, and just life in general from them than I ever expected! They were my main motivation to change my major before I even started university, and their hugs made my days. Five years after leaving South Africa, my thoughts constantly wander back to “my” babies, children and teenagers. Most often, with of all the amazing opportunities that I am offered here at Northeastern, I think of my teenagers.
One of the best and most important classes that I have taken in college is ENTR 2206 Global Social Enterprise. As a business major, it is mind-blowing and encouraging to see how business can be used to do good, and how many businesses like Warby Parker or Sanergy are already out there doing exactly that. The question I often ask myself is, what would’ve been different, if I had known what social enterprise was before I left for my volunteer experience?
I didn’t have insight into topics like financial sustainability and transparency in the children’s home (though this was definitely an issue). If I were back in Kwa-Zulu Natal now, I would focus on a long-term vision regarding employment. So many of the teenagers in the children’s home either get pregnant before they finish school, or end up out on the streets and in prison after they leave. From job panels to type-writing classes to empowerment – getting our teenagers exposed to the working world could have really impacted them long-term. Most of them want to have a job that pays well enough that they can get by and many of them want to give back to society. If I had known about social enterprise, I would have been able to teach them that they can do both. Not only in order to encourage them that they have the power to tackle one of the many challenges in South Africa, but also to give them hope by showing them how many companies already do it.
There are very few things about my perfectly imperfect year in South Africa that I wish I could change. Teaching my teenagers that business and social good can go hand in hand is the only big one.
