Flywire recently partnered with BUILD Greater Boston for our corporate social responsibility initiative. We felt our company values and dedication to education matched BUILD’s mission to provide education to students from under-resourced communities and propel them to high school, college, and career success.
Thus far, Flywire has participated in BUILD’s Cookie Boss business project, mentorship program, and the Entrepreneur games.
Cookie Boss
The Cookie Boss project is BUILD’s flagship business, and it is run completely by students. Every year, a different group of students runs the business, and a certain number of them have the opportunity to become the CEO, CFO, etc. of Cookie Boss. In order to practice their pitch and presentation skills, the team was invited by Flywire to visit our office. This gave the students an opportunity to develop and learn from professionals. A group of FlyMates (Flywire employees) listened to the Cookie Boss pitch, gave feedback on it, and bought Flywire-branded cookies from the students. Because one of Flywire’s company values is global collaboration, we chose to ship the cookies to all of our offices around the world, such as Singapore, London, Valencia, and Cluj-Napoca!
Mentorship program
Another initiative that BUILD runs is their mentorship program. Flywire has nine FlyMates, split into two teams, who mentor a group of freshman at two high schools in the Greater Boston area. Flywire sends four mentors on sight every week, where they work with students on their Shark Tank-style pitches for the BUILD Fest Pitch Challenge. This provides students with professional development from their community. Not only does this initiative give back to the community, but it gives FlyMates the opportunity to develop new skills. This project lasts the entire school year, and at the end of the year, the students will present their pitches at the BUILD Fest Pitch Challenge event.
The E-games
The Entrepreneur games took place on October 18th at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston, MA, where over 1,000 players from more than 70 companies around Boston participated in the sixth annual event. The games are a way to bring Boston tech companies together to support BUILD. Flywire’s team consisted of 18 FlyMates who participated in over 50 games, which consisted of fitness challenges, brain games, team tournaments, and just-for-fun activities. Flywire walked away with six first place awards and a second place win overall, but in the end, it was really about supporting BUILD’s mission and helping them raise money. BUILD raised $330,000 from this year’s games!
What is BUILD?
It’s like Shark Tank for teens! BUILD is a youth entrepreneurship program dedicated to creating a more diverse future workforce by ensuring students in Boston’s under-resourced communities have access to the mentorship, professional development opportunities, and funding they need to graduate high school, go to college, and launch successful careers.