Business Promo Videos

Urban School Foundation takes a look back on our first year of our entrepreneurship education program. We had some really creative businesses. Here are the promotion videos for the top two business plans:

ROOKIE'S

DOGGY STYLE

Proud to Support

The urban school foundation feels strongly about providing quality education. Congruent with this notion is our esteem for quality public broadcasting, which we feel can offer quality educational programming. That is why we're proud to support wttw Chicago.

We're soooo official!

We're completely official now. Back in January we received our 501(c)3 tax exempt status from the IRS. Now we have our e-number exempt status with the State of Illinois. Yipee!

Make a tax-exempt donation! Donate a backpack and make an immediate difference in a student's life today, or donate to our Young Entrepreneurs program and impact a student's life forever. Remember, with no administrative costs, ALL of your donation goes towards our backpacks and entrepreneurship education.

Read more about our programs, here.

Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour!

This past Friday our Schurz Young Entrepreneurs students were invited by Junior Achievement to take part in the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour. We all learned so much from speakers Arel Moodie,  Adam Witty and Duane Spires.

All the speakers on the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour are young entrepreneurs under 30 who have made their first million dollars. These speakers gave our entrepreneurs sound advice on how to find the confidence in ourselves to start a business. They also offered pearls of wisdom through personal and business stories. We learned that when you're starting a business you should:

1. Commit
2. Learn the proper technique
3. Find a mentor
4. Take action!

And though we were learning, we had so much fun doing it! A great thanks to the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour, all our speakers and Junior Achievement.

(USF Young Entrepreneurs dance off to win Arel Moodie's new inspirational book)

From the mouths of BABES...

Ahhhh, primary market research - a great excuse to talk to that guy or girl you like so much! Continuing on our marketing theme, Schurz students are conducting surveys to learn what magnet products their peers would be most interested in purchasing.

Why magnets? In addition to writing their own business plans, the class is starting a business as a group with the guidance of Kevin Rutter and Luciana Tiberio. The goal is to manufacture magnets that would do well in the market that exists at Schurz HS - hands on experience starting and running a business. As a lesson in social responsibility, all proceeds will be donated to a school organization of their choosing.

Here's an example of a magnet that might be assembled and sold:

4. The adhesive with vinyl lettering is placed on the magnet. The excess magnet material is cut, and the product is packaged.

3. Vinyl lettering is placed on the adhesive

2. The colored vinyl is kiss-cut with a design. Then, the excess vinyl is picked out, leaving only the kiss-cut design.

1. Raw magnet material

"She said Pee!"

Yes, I did! Our Schurz High School students are learning about creating a good marketing mix using the four P's - Price, Product, Placement and Promotion. Heading into their 7th month of our Young Entrepreneurs program, our students continue to write business plans for their business ideas, and they're learning about how to get the word out about their products and services.



After learning about different methods of market research we watched The Merchants of Cool, a documentary that explores how MTV discovers what's cool in popular teen culture. Girls learned that their customer profile was labeled a midriff, the boys were mooks and by the end EVERYONE understood how they were being marketed-to.


We also learned about how marketing and branding has evolved, and the how and why they identify with one brand lifestyle and not another. Frontline's The Persuaders was a great way to illustrate these topics.

Pack Our Haunted House

Patriots wear their Pack 2 School t-shirt.

We want to thank the Athletic Department, particularly Chad Dauphin, Dimitra Mullins and Michael Feigh, and the wonderful students at Stevenson High School for all their help in our most recent Pack-a-Packathon. Selling t-shirts for their regional football game, Stevenson Packed Their Haunted House on Halloween weekend to raise over $4,000 for backpacks. Thank you so much!

For more photos from that evening, visit our photo gallery.

Principal for a Day

Luciana Tiberio and Bob Tucker took part in Chicago Public School's Principal for a Day October fundraiser. Principal for a day is an opportunity for local philanthropic organizations and businesses to learn about Chicago Public Schools and interact with students, teachers and principals.

Working along side Thurgood Marshall Middle School's Principal Paul Flaherty, Luciana read the morning announcements, handed out pumpkins for the homeroom decorating contest and visited several classrooms. Along with volunteering her time, The Urban School Foundation's contribution to the school and helped to purchase new sports equipment.

Bob Tucker lead the charge at Schurz High School pep rally, along with volunteer friend and local radio personality Dougie Stylz. It was Shurz's first pep rally in three years. Needless to say the students were excited as can be for their homecoming weekend.

Attending the Principal for a Day Reception at Navy Pier later that evening, USF was excited to hear that the day helped raise $1.8 million in monetary donations as well as additional support, program and training pledges from volunteer principals. We also were able to meet some of our talented students presenting everything form their newest robot inventions to their talented dance skills.

Entrepreneurs in Teaching Entrepreneurship

We wanted to share a little with you about our entrepreneurship education program, Future Entrepreneurs. Urban School Foundation was started with the intention of providing Chicagoland's homeless and disadvantaged students with the tools to build a brighter future, and this program is a great example of how we plan on doing this.

We're working closely with Illinois 2009-2010 Teacher of the Year, Kevin Rutter, and Schurz High School in Chicago to develop and deliver a hands-on, experience-based curriculum in starting, running and managing a business, starting with the junior class finance students.

Class started on September 7th, and since then students been exploring their talents, learning about different types of businesses and recognizing opportunities for capitalizing on their skills. They've also heard about the sacrifices it took to start a business by local entrepreneur, Bob Tucker Jr, and visited and asked questions about his business. All this is building up to the start of writing and developing a strong business plan.

With this program we hope not only to build confidence and provide them with the skills they need to build a business for themselves one day, but also to better understand business and thereby be better employees. A benefit to not only their lives, but our collective future.

Stay tuned to find out what ideas the students come up on their adventure in entrepreneurship. Read more about our Future Entrepreneurs program on our website, www.urbanschoolfoundation.org.

Playing 10th Inning Catch-up

We intend to use this blog to focus on education and our programs, but we'd like to take a time out to talk about Ken Burns' film. Besides education, the Urban School Foundation is a proud supporter of public media, particularly WBEZ Chicago and wttw11. Both offer quality, objective and educational programming.

Back in September the Urban School foundation was invited to Lunch with Ken Burns for the launch of the new addition to his Baseball Series, The 10th Inning. We wanted to thank PBS for the opportunity to attend the pre-screening of this wonderful film, and we highly recommend you take a look. We know you'll like it because, well, it's Ken Burns. The man knows how to tell a great story. Learn more about The 10th Inning here.

The Illinois Secretary of State liked what we want to do for the students of Illinois. On August 2, 2010 we were officially accepted as a nonprofit organization by the State of Illinois! We've applied for our 501c3 charitable status and are eager to hear from the IRS - who would have ever thought they'd say that? What does it mean for you if we get our 501c3 status? As a donor you'll be able to deduct your contributions from your income for taxes.

We've also officially launched our website! We're still making additions and tweaks, but you can read all about our programs and who we've already helped.

Our first blog post! We're so excited to get our non profit up and running and to help students.

We've just been approved as a corporation by the State of Illinois, and we're in the process of acquiring our 501c3 status.

So, who are we and what do we do? Well, we're caring community members, small business owners and former teachers that are dedicated to doing our part to provide low-income students in the Chicagoland area an equal opportunity to a quality education and a brighter future.

We're starting small with our focus on two projects. We're raising money and reaching out to donors to help us get school supplies to the kids who need them most - homeless and low-income students. Did you know that there are over 14,000 homeless students attending Chicago public schools alone? We're trying to get them what they need to be active participants in their education with our Pack 2 School program. Changing the world one backpack at a time. Read more about that at www.pack2school.org. 

We're also passionate about charting an entrepreneurial path in our student's future. Working with the 2010 Illinois Teacher of the Year, we're in the process of developing a hands-on curriculum that prepares students for modern entrepreneurship, challenging them to explore their strengths and talents and thinking about how they can leverage those skills to start a dorm room (or home) business.

Thanks to local manufacturing partner, CDI Corp, this year Carl Schurz High School students attending the Academy of Finance II class will have the opportunity to actually start and run their own small business! We'll keep you posted on their progress and products as the class develops. Until then, learn more about this program at www.futurentrepreneurs.org.

So what's with the blog?

With this blog we're excited to bring you interesting news, videos and pictures about the education issues we care about - form the serious, to the silly and ridiculous. From time to time we'll be give you updates on our programs and events. We'd love your thoughts on these issues, and we invite you to also check out our discussion forums. We invite you to continue reading our blog.