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Issue: 1169 Date: 1/17/2013
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St. Louis teens make Forbes' 30 under 30 list |
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| Simone Bernstein and her brother, Jake, appear on Forbes magazine's 30 under 30 list of social entrepreneurs. (Provided by Bernstein family) |
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How does it feel to join the ranks of Mark Zuckerberg, Lady Gaga and LeBron James?
Just ask local sister and brother Simone and Jake Bernstein, ages 20 and 18, whose website listing volunteer opportunities for teens landed the siblings on Forbes magazine's 30 under 30 list of social entrepreneurs last month (along with Zuckerberg, Gaga, James and others).
The Bernsteins created
http://STLVolunteen.org in the summer of 2009 after Simone Bernstein became frustrated by the lack of a central resource for volunteer opportunities for teens. She said volunteerism made a big impact on her own life when her father, who was in the Navy, was deployed overseas when Simone was 12. The family got a boost from people who helped with carpool and meals. "I wanted to give back and so did my brother," she told me.
http://STLVolunteen.org was so successful that in March, the Bernsteins launched a national version, volunTEENnation.org. Since the launch, some 8,000 teens tapped into 3,000 opportunities listed on the site. (The Clayton natives are now in college, Simone at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York and her brother at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)
VolunTEENnation is volunteer-run and relies on in-kind donations and grants. "We really want to make it a site run by teens," Bernstein. "It's really a lot easier for a teen to talk to a teen about their experience."
She said the original site was launched with $48. Most recently, it received $500 from generationOn to run a service project to commemorate 9/11.
They've also received $5,000 from L'Oreal Paris and $25,000 from NASCAR. They gave the $25,000 to Autism Speaks and coordinated a service project with that organization.
"In reality, it doesn't cost much to start up your enterprise," said Simone Bernstein, who encouraged other young people to follow in her footsteps. "If they don't find something they want to do, they can start it themselves."
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