The energizing feeling Jared Chung received from mentoring low-income youth after college was one he wanted to share with his friends. Yet, despite their fellow interest in volunteering, the commitment was too prohibitive for most.
"It's hard to commit to be home every other week for two years, or to promise to get out of work on Wednesday afternoon at 3 p.m.," Chung acknowledged in an email to BostInno.
Instead of dismissing the dilemma, however, Chung started brainstorming solutions. He had seen firsthand how enthusiastic high school students grew exploring careers, and he didn't want to extinguish that spark. How could the mentorship model be tweaked in a way that would more easily bring career knowledge to the youth who needed it most?
His answer was CareerVillage, an online platform connecting students seeking advice with more than 500 professionals willing to dish it out for free.
Chung walked away from his own job at corporate consulting firm McKinsey & Company to found CareerVillage, well aware the process wouldn't be easy.
"It was a little sketchy at the beginning — to satisfy the promise that we'd get an answer for any kid about any career field, we had to lean pretty heavily on some friends," Chung admitted.
Chung started contacting the friends who initially expressed interest in volunteering, and then began tapping their pool of connections, as well. "The one guy we know is a professional actor," Chung added. "The one woman we knew working at Google. The one friend who was a journalist."
Over time, the pool of professionals grew to include roughly 500 people, each of whom were willing to share their experience when their schedule permitted, whether weekday or weekend, night or day. Members could sign up easily via LinkedIn, and then be notified when a student asked a question related to their area of expertise. Their answers could be one sentence long or span several paragraphs. Either way, participating professionals were helping change a student's life.
What Chung didn't expect was for students to starting writing notes thanking the professionals for their advice. The response was reassuring, and encouraging for those volunteering their time.
"We started seeing people sign up that we didn't know," Chung said, reminiscing on how excited the CareerVillage team was. "Actually, it's still pretty exciting every time I think about it."
The feeling was similar to the one felt when CareerVillage raised more than $26,000 on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo.
"CareerVillage uses a crowdsourcing model to get help to our kids," Chung explained. "We wanted our fundraising activities to match that same model. … We thought, 'We crowdsource, why not crowdfund?'"
The team hit, and surpassed, its $25,000 fundraising goal a couple of days before their January 1 deadline, only further reaffirming the concept. With the funding, CareerVillage will now be able to serve 25 new high schools, as well as train guidance counselors on how to use the platform and provide classrooms with worksheets, lesson plans and homework exercises all around discovering careers.
Educators have certainly started latching onto the platform. One of the startup's launch partners, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, called CareerVillage "a game-changer," according to Chung, who added, "Every single school that used it last year signed up again to use it this year with their kids."
As the team transitions into 2014, the goal is to bring even more professionals onto the platform. With that, CareerVillage will be able to reach an increasing amount of high school students and provide them with the advice they need to achieve success.
CareerVillage will also be expanding nationally. Beyond Boston, the platform is being used in New Haven, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago and the Bay Area — covering a total of 6,000 students.
"Even so, there are a lot of cities with desperately high-need populations," Chung said. "We're still only scratching the surface of the need."
To help the team meet that need and volunteer your own time, click here.
