Whatever It Takes.

A little background

WIT Founder, Sarah Hernholm, painted “Whatever It Takes” on a banner and hung it in her classroom. It became the motto of that class and all the classes she taught during her teaching career. 

In 2009, Sarah left teaching and focused on creating a platform where youth could get their ideas heard and serve in leadership roles within their community. This platform became WIT, the only college credit social entrepreneur and leadership course in the country for high school teens. Upon completion of the course, teens earn between 2 units - 6 units of college credit from UCSD. Teens accepted into WIT learn how to design and launch, manage and measure, a social enterprise or project. Over the years teens have launched enterprises that have made a local and national impact. In addition to the WIT college credit program, Sarah launched Smart City Saturday, now called, WIT Hackathons. WIT hosts teen-only hackathons around the country. At these hackathons teens get to tackle real problems and pitch their solutions to city officials, CEOs, entrepreneurs and leaders, and even earn college-credit.

And guess what?! 

We also have WIT Community. A Community that is dedicated to teens committed to making an impact and interested in connecting with CEOs, entrepreneurs, artists, creators, engineers, etc.. The WIT Community is a membership based community with teens from around the world.

What does it mean to “do WIT”?

WIT is built on the foundation for the "11 Tips for Doing WIT”. People involved in WIT programs and on the WIT Team commit to living the 11 Tips and “doing WIT”.

Some of the Tips include:
- Living In Alignment
- 10-10-10
- Showing Up
- Setting Yourself Up for Success
- Own It

Over the years we have collected the data to show that teens involved in WIT increase their emotional intelligence. Truly, that’s what this is all about. Using the vehicle of entrepreneurship to help young people develop their emotional intelligence and grow as a leader. As we know, more often than not in the business world, the most competent, capable and effective individuals are those with high emotional intelligence.

So, teens and tweens in our programs are encouraged to take risks and fail. They get the chance to develop their social skills, deepen their empathy, increase their self-awareness, understand the value of self-regulation, and more. We think all of this is part of life and so does Entrepreneur magazine. T(w)eens aren't given many spaces to learn how to take risks, rebound from failure and develop the fortitude and self-awareness needed to be successful in life. WIT provides that space and platform. That’s why we say “learning life while launching and running a business”.

In WIT we are committed to doing Whatever It Takes for ourselves and for others.

Interested? Click below on the program you’re interested in joining!

Are you an adult interested in learning more about WIT? Send us an email, too! info@doingwit.org. 

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you feel inspired to support teens doing Whatever It Takes.