The Enterprising Women Foundation team has been proud to partner with high schools across the U.S. and Canada in support of the Young Enterprising Women Mentoring Forum Program.

In each community where we host a program, we identify the high schools we believe can most benefit from having this program hosted at their school.  Working with STEM leaders, school counselors, and math and science teachers, the school identifies students who are strong in math, science or technology who can benefit from participating in this program.

At some high schools, an entire grade level of girls is invited to participated.  At smaller schools, it may be possible to open the Mentoring Forum to all interested girls. We recommend that a minimum of 30 girls are selected to participate, but if the school can accommodate a larger group, we have hosted events with as many as 100 girls participating.

We ask our local event chairs to work closely with the school system to identify a date and time for the event that is most convenient on the school’s calendar.  Normally our programs are hosted after school, but when that poses a transportation problem for girls who rely on school busing to get home after school, the program can also be hosted in the morning or at any time convenient for the school.

If you are a school administrator, counselor or teacher interested in having a Young Enterprising Women Mentoring Program hosted at your school, reach out to us and we will be glad to contact you.  We appreciate your interest in the Young Enterprising Women Mentoring Forum Program.

We Recommend
Having a small committee of four or five volunteers is always better than doing this solo, ask a small group of others in your network to assist you. Your impact will be greater and the work can be easily divided into four or five manageable tasks.

It is helpful to have someone on your team who can make contact with your high school administration to determine the best high school/s in your area to participate in this program. You will need to work with the school to determine a date and time that works best on the school’s calendar—avoiding testing days, vacation times and teacher workdays, etc. We normally recommend hosting it as an after-school event, but some schools are concerned about students who need to use after school transportation provided by the school and prefer to have the program hosted during normal school hours.  We suggest scheduling three hours for the program.

Fundraising
Another member of your team can be charged with spearheading fundraising for your event. You are not required to raise funds, but if you wish to select students for our scholarship program so that they may attend the Enterprising Women of the Year Awards Conference and the accompanying program we have developed for students who attend, we ask that you raise $2,500 per student and set a goal of sending at least one and preferably two students from each city. Some cities have sent as many as four students to the conference.

SOME CITIES HAVE SENT AS MANY AS TEN STUDENTS TO THE CONFERENCE.

This amount will cover the student and her parent or guardian’s airfare, hotel, conference registration fees, meals, and transportation from the airport to the conference hotel and back. Each student will also receive a $100 gift card to cover incidental expenses traveling to and from the conference. We encourage event chairs to raise funds to send two girls per city to the conference if possible. In some cities, local event chairs have one or two local companies willing to sponsor at the $2,500 level and this makes the fundraising easier. In other cities, many women entrepreneurs in the community will step up and provide $250, $500 or $1,000 donations to help underwrite the scholarships. We can create a donation page for your event so that promotions are linked to this page and funds are earmarked for your event. This streamlines collecting donations and we handle the paperwork and receipts on our end.

STEM
Most event chairs work with a small network of outstanding women business owners from the community that represent the STEM fields to provide speakers for the event. One team member might spearhead this effort or the group can work together to identify 6-8 speakers for a panel representing IT, engineering, medicine or health science, and other fields that will be of interest to the young women who attend the program. We like to see a diversity of fields represented and diversity among the panelists.

After the panel shares knowledge about their field and you open it up to the young women for questions, your panelists can each join a table in the room for the small group mentoring component of the program.

High Achieving Girls
When working with your local high school, we suggest you ask the school administrator, counselor or STEM contact at the school (sometimes a math or science instructor) to identify high achieving girls in math, science or technology who would most benefit from this program. We suggest you target a minimum of 30 girls from each high school. At some events, the school has opened it up to all girls from a particular grade level who are interested in attending and we have hosted events with more than 200 girls.

AT SOME EVENTS, THE SCHOOL HAS OPENED IT UP TO ALL GIRLS FROM A PARTICULAR GRADE LEVEL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING AND WE HAVE HOSTED EVENTS WITH 200 or MORE GIRLS.

You may also wish to ask your school contact about inviting a second or third high school to participate. Select the school best able to host (based on location and willingness to take the lead) and ask them to reach out to their counterparts at other schools. This may mean that the students will start the program in the school auditorium, library or all-purpose room to hear and engage in the panel discussion and then move to an area with small tables to accommodate the mentoring session (media rooms or libraries are often a good choice).

Save the Date
Our headquarters team can produce a Save the Date announcement for you once your date and location are confirmed and can set up a donation page on our website. We are also happy to have a Foundation representative on your initial organizing call to help the group understand the program better and share best practices from other events that have been hosted across the U.S. and Canada.

Dr. Rebecca Rayburn-Reeves

FInancial Literacy
Program Coordinator