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In our early days of putting the Parental Pal concept together we experimented with various business models. We approached a fair number of investors to see what they would make of it. Unanimously their feedback was that the key words “family” and “education” were enough to declare our idea as clearly not “sexy enough”. It just wasn’t hot.
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So we found a good way to get started without much money and today we’re glad to be
independent of other folks’ financial interests.
Membership
stats at ParentalPal.Org have shown a steady growth rate since and we learned new things every day which ultimately resulted in launching the
Shared Mindspace project (2010), which
grabs the idea of student exchange by its roots and takes it straight into the 21st century.
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Many parents have since joined us to establish individual exchange partnerships for their kids and let them go global in body and mind.
Membership with Parental Pals generally requires
personal commitment and Shared Mindspace requires even more dedication: the whole process gets parents deeply involved with its philosophy and with the many personal
tales that tell the story of this mission for global education. It gets them involved with kindred spirits, with their wishes and ambitions, with their talents and their dreams.
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Now here’s the gist: during these last ten months we have been offered capital from individual and institutional investors at a rate of two to three offers a month, money which we might have taken and used to add momentum to our growth. However, we have politely declined and have instead taken the opportunity to inquire in-depth what the driving factors behind these offers were.
The message is clear: there is no desire to partake in Parental Pals’ future earnings (the
social profit message is coming across clearly and helps to avoid misunderstandings) !
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It’s the desire to connect with the young people emerging from
Shared Mindspace. To connect with them and with their future.
Because their future is exceptionally promising.
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So we held a conference with these would-be investors to find out exactly what it is that holds so much fascination for them and this is the outcome; it holds true for all of them (all twenty-four were willing to talk about their thoughts and associations: nine ladies and fifteen gentlemen from twelve countries, all of them are parents of more than one child).
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1.) Personal involvement leads to a direct and emotional perspective and helps to appreciate the tremendous difference Shared Mindspace is about to make for thousands of students. Parents sending their own teenage sons and daughters out into the world, well beyond the boundaries of their familiar home and school environment, see the issue of global education in a light which no strategy on paper could ever match for clarity.
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2.) Shared Mindspace lets kids create their own arena of opportunities like no other comparable program. Here everything’s possible with the right partners and being restricted to a selection of pre-arranged modules, time frames and host-families is a thing of the past.
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3.) Shared Mindspace kids come from families who take the initiative. They tackle education with an enterprising spirit and from many angles. The program gives powerful leverage to their attitude.
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4.) Families in this program are all set to embrace global life, they don’t buy education as a service and offer it to their kids as a step in their career ladder. They think in terms of cultural appreciation, historic understanding, connected thinking and social responsibility; learning, travelling and international dialogue make their whole life more enjoyable.
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5.) And finally this is why these 24 parents saw an excellent opportunity to invest: because Shared Mindspace hosts the world’s most intense family community of cooperative and open minded global citizens, giving young people direct and mentored access to global education. Particularly these 90% (that’s an educated and modest guess !) who would have their curiosity and ability stifled by the usual C & C factors without it. What the C & C factors are ? .Well, it’s Cash & Connections: ” How much do you have and whom do you know ?”
At Shared Mindspace these factors are “a problem solved“, which makes it a miraculous incubator for young talents from all walks of life who can reach out for more opportunities and for each other anytime.
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