Meet five Moorestown Friends Upper School students who have come up with their own businesses or nonprofits. Each student has a unique story of how they pursued entrepreneurship, showing that the MFS community has a lot more to offer outside the buildings of the campus. Each of the students brings a different perspective to the work that they do, and they shared with WordsWorth how they began doing their work.
Rebecca Benjamin ’21 started Rebecca’s Mission when she was ten years old. She has been running her nonprofit for six years and said her goal is “to bring reading into kid’s lives.”
Rebecca said, “(I) was upset that not everyone had access to books.” She then came up with the idea to make reading a priority for all the kids that were unable to access books. Benjamin created a “bookmobile,” which is a bus that she owns that is filled to the top with books. She takes to underprivileged areas and gives young children the opportunity to pick a book to keep.
Her favorite memory so far has been when she recently went to the Hope Community Charter School in Camden and read a story to the kids. She said “it was amazing” seeing the faces of the kids when they picked a book to keep.
Rebecca’s whole family is involved in running the organization. Rebecca’s parents do the legal work, which involves anything to do with programming and educators. Her younger sister, Ali Benjamin ’23, runs the social media for the nonprofit. Rebecca said she spends around three or more hours a week trying to help her community.
Rebecca said her project has given her a whole new perspective and taught her about the ins and outs of running a business. She explained her hope that one day MFS can change the fundraisers they do by making them more geared toward reading for youth.
Sreehita Hajeebu ’23 created her nonprofit, called “CAUSE” (Creating Awareness for Underprivileged Student Empowerment), in eighth grade. She began by having a drive in the middle school and in total collected over 500 books for kids in India.
Sreehita’s grandparents run a school in India, and she realized how few resources they have when she visited the summer before seventh grade. This inspired her to make a change, which led her to organize the drive. Following this, she created her non-profit.
Sreehita spends at least two to three hours a week working on sending books to her grandparents and thinking of ideas for more fundraisers.
As for the future of CAUSE, Sreehita said she plans on continuing her work through college and for the rest of her life.
Some of her goals for her time in Upper School are to do another drive and potentially make it a yearly event. Her father also has a friend who is willing to let her tour the other schools in India so she can expand her impact to different schools throughout the country. Sreehita has also branched to different schools to collect more books for the school in India. She has collected sixty books from a school in Chicago which she donated to the school in India.
Joaquin Estevez ’20, an 18-year-old at MFS, sells high-end limited edition shoes out of his bedroom. He started doing this in seventh grade, and his goal is to make profit.
Estevez has always liked shoes and was waiting for a way to pursue his passion in a productive way. He spends around fifteen hours a week buying and reselling shoes to kids and adults.
Joaquin says that he hopes to continue with this business until he can morph it into another more profitable business. The general audience for this business is all kids and fans of high end shoes, including some MFS students.
Joaquin said, “I have a secret process, and I can’t reveal it now, but I will say that it includes paying people to wait in lines for hours at a time.” He even admits that he sometimes waits in lines for eight hours or more, just to get a certain shoe that he wants to sell. The products Joaquin sells are not limited to sneakers; he also sells Supreme shirts and other high-end brand clothes.
Kat Johnson ’21 is a sixteen-year-old who has a different type of business.
Johnson has been a Girl Scout for the past seven years. As a Girl Scout, Kat has completed many different projects, including a special one for her Gold Award. The Gold Award is the highest honor a Girl Scout can receive, and is given to those who have an idea and create an approved proposal.
Kat’s idea was a way to take falling leaves and turn them into a compost that will help her township. If implemented in her township, the idea will save thousands of dollars and help the community better recycle and reuse what they are given from nature.
Kat is close to getting her Gold Award. This idea was considered for her capstone due to the enormous effects it would have on a community. She developed the idea through environmental science, a class taught at MFS, which goes into depth about how to help save our planet. Kat also sells cookies, nuts, and candies to help raise money for the Girl Scouts.
Six years ago, Madalena (Madi) Hughes ’21 started a toy drive for unaccompanied minors in Arizona.
Typically, the recipients of the toys are typically immigrants who are left in the US without their parents. Madi said she does this to “let them know someone is thinking of them.” Madi’s mother is an immigration attorney and she has always been passionate about making sure these kids feel less lonely.
These kids are usually alone on Christmas and Madi wanted to make them feel special, so she wraps gifts to the kids from “Santa.” Madi recruits volunteers to wrap the gifts, which are donated from MFS Students, her crew team, Eastern Regional High School, her family, and the Alice Paul Institute.
