Girls Connect, Mend the Gap, Parent Power, pitch at Teach for America entrepreneur workshops

Sarah Faude, left, and Megan Roberto, right, pitching Girls Connect at the May 19th event.

This post was submitted by Kevin Lee, one of the participants of the workshop series.

Late last month, Teach for America wrapped up the Greater Philadelphia Innovation in Education program, a series of workshops launched in February to help educators think like entrepreneurs.

Over the course of three months, at three weekend workshops, GPIE participants learned how to research and analyze the root causes to various educational problems and then refined and iterated on their own ideas for solutions to those problems. Those educators pitched their new enterprises to their peers at Wharton’s Huntsman Hall on May 19th.

[Full Disclosure: The workshop series was coordinated in association with Technically Philly.]

After the jump, read about three of the programs that had tech ties.

Girls Connect: Between them, Sarah Faude and Megan Roberto have taught in six schools in Philly, at middle and high schools. Nearly every day, they are witness to how girls use social media as a tool for bullying and negativity. With Girls Connect, they aim to create a safe online community where girl students can share and grow together. To launch quickly, Girls Connect started as a private Facebook group for 75 of the girls they’ve taught so far. Sarah and Megan plan to expand the group to allow more students to connect with each other and eventually create their own private community site.

Mend the Gap: John Young and Kevin Lee are focusing on the problem of high school admissions preparation for 7th graders. In the School District of Philadelphia, students have to apply to high school in a process that is akin to college admissions. Students have to spend valuable class time manually going through a printed high school guide to identify the schools to which they can apply. With Mend the Gap, Young and Lee aim to develop tools, both online and in the classroom, to guide and help the student with the application process and bring greater awareness of the importance of 7th grade to their future to both parents and students. [Editor’s note: At a recent hackathon, the pair continued to build on this problem.]

Parent Power: Quibila A. Divine is focusing on the problem of access to a good quality education in Philadelphia through Parent Power, an organization founded by her sister, Sylvia Simms. Parent Power focuses on educating and mentoring parents to become a local, pro-active community leader in their school. They are aiming to expand their network of informed parents outside of their North Philadelphia community and are currently applying for funding.