Teen philanthropy at work!
Chores-For-Charity was started by Ilana Rothbein when she was a high school student
to create awareness about epilepsy and raise money for epilepsy research as her
older brother Paul was struggling with seizures. When Paul's medical condition seemed
hopeless, his parents sought the help of NYU Medical Center. Finally, Paul was able
to get his epilepsy under control and has been seizure free for five years.
As a tribute to her brother, Paul, Ilana wanted to donate money for epilepsy research
at NYU Medical Center through their non-profit organization, Finding a Cure for
Epilepsy and Seizures (FACES). She set aside 45 hours of her babysitting earnings
and donated almost $500 to FACES. Ilana then developed the Chores-For-Charity website
and program to open a new avenue of private donations. The organization encourages
high school students to become philanthropic by donating a small amount of their
part-time earning and as an alternative way to earn community service credit. Ilana
has now helped raise over $20,000 for FACES and helped other teens make contributions
to charities of their choice.
Q: Why did you form a charitable business?
Ilana: My brother was diagnosed at age 12 with epilepsy and I was 10 at the time
and I always felt compelled to help him, I just didn’t know how. So I took on babysitting
jobs and over the course of a year I started to donate my babysitting earnings to
our village hospital, which is NYU Medical Center, and I raised $450. I’m like,
wow, you know, that’s a pretty incredible for one person. How can I get other students
or other people involved? I figured this can be a community service project for
them. A lot of kids have a lot of money and discretionary income and to learn fiscal
responsibility at a young age I think is really important.
Q: How old were you when you started your business?
Ilana: I was a sophomore in high school.
Q: What were some of the challenges you faced in starting the business?
Ilana: Well it’s a very innovative concept when you’re asking people, especially
students, to donate a fraction of their earnings. So convincing people and schools
for this change is hard.
Q: What kept you going when there were challenges?
Ilana: I just see myself as a pretty resilient person. If it’s not one school I’ll
move on to the next or think about how else I can get back into that school. I look
at it as a vehicle to talk about epilepsy, which is another of my goals is to create
awareness.
Q: Did you get help or advice from other people?
Ilana: My mom is a very helpful and so is NYU. And I would ask students and my friends
what they thought and I got advice. I asked also like local politicians actually
about the idea and they really loved it as well, so to have that support was really
neat.
Q: How did you finance your start-up business?
Ilana: It didn’t really take financing. I created the Web site, and that did cost
money but the rest was just creating the papers, having NYU look it over and then
uploading them. So there wasn’t any real expense in that.
Q: What do you like most about your business?
Ilana: You hear about breast cancer, you hear about other horrible diseases, but
you don’t hear about epilepsy so it’s been a great vehicle for talking and opening
up dialogue about epilepsy.
Q: What is the most important thing you’ve learned through your experience as an
entrepreneur?
Ilana: That you really have to network because people come in handy that you never
expected. And you have to be very open-minded. You’ve just got to work with people
and you have to work with them well.
Q: What would your advice be to other kids thinking of starting businesses?
Ilana: You have to be 100% in it because if you’re not you can’t jump back up into
things if the challenges come your way. If you’re not passionate then it’s very
hard to fight those challenges. I really wanted to help epilepsy, that’s why my
heart and soul was into it.
Q: Anything else you’d like to share about your experience as an entrepreneur?
Ilana: Make it something simple, sit with it, research it and develop it. And don’t
be shy!
