As a proud social entrepreneur, Sander Bos, currently 21 years old, has achieved great things over the past few years at such a young age. One of the greatest achievements is running his own social startup, which is aimed at providing online tutoring by connecting university students with high schoolers called “Studenten Helpen Scholieren”.
Knocking on the doors of Enactus
Living in Utrecht at the moment, while spending most of his childhood in Amersfoort, Sander had great aspirations to do something valuable for the world besides just studying and spending his time with his nose in the books. Also, in order to create a successful tutoring platform like “Studenten Helpen Scholieren”, he needed to start somewhere. This brought Sander at the doorstep of Enactus:
“During my first year at the University I heard about Enactus during a lecture. Then, again in the library a header like “start your own enterprise and make impact”. After seeing this, I was completely sold! The following board year was the first year in my life in which I didn’t feel obligated to spend a significant part of my life at school and attending lectures. A combination of this full-time entrepreneurial freedom and working with incredible people made it one of the best years of my life.”
From startup member to startup owner
When starting fresh out in the field of social entrepreneurship, Sander spotted many different opportunities and chances to grow further!
“I started within the Think Tank and later on, I did a board year at Enactus Utrecht were I was responsible for events and startup project coordination. Halfway through the year we took over SpelenderGrijs from an entrepreneur and its co-owners (young investors). A pretty big company for Enactus terms with 10k in revenue and a national network of regional managers. But the business model didn’t work, so within Enactus we redesigned it and tried to implement it. This was harder than I thought…”
To add on, this is where he also found out where his true ambitions lie:
“The biggest opportunity is definitely the possibility to work with Enactus students. I love that kind of people: a heart for the world and an entrepreneurial mindset”
Of course, he couldn’t resist to share one of his legendary bloopers, so to say:
“Haha biggest blooper is definitely the National Competition at the end of the year. I won the amazing Ron Jansen Spirit award but gave the most horrible speech in English (with 10 obvious mistakes) in front of a lot of CEO’s and 400 students.”
Which Sander still regards as one of his memorable moments at Enactus:
“The love and community feeling during the National Competition was heartwarming. It’s still one of the greatest days ever.”
At the end of the road
So, what’s next for Sander? Did his journey end after doing an amazing board year? On the contrary, his time at Enactus was rather a steppingstone for him to start growing his own social business, despite the COVID-19 outbreak at hand. Sander has demonstrated that even in these times of vulnerability, solidarity will rise. And that the only way to go on is to take decisive action. This didn’t stop Sander from achieving to create a social platform aimed at connecting university students with high school students.
With a double student board year in the startup world in his pocket, both as a chair at DutchSE as well as startup & education manager at UtrechtInc Students, Sander started to write his own story as a young and inspiring social innovator right after ending his chapter at Enactus. But right now, he has his hands full with managing his online tutoring platform studentenhelpenscholieren.nl, to help out high schoolers in need of tutoring in this time of the COVID-19 crisis. Eventually, Sander inspires to become an innovative leader in terms of education.
More information
Interested in finding out more about Sander’s platform and how you as a student can help out others with teaching? Visit the website and sign up now to become an online tutor! https://studentenhelpenscholieren.nl/
Or help Sander! His initiative is nominated for the Young Impact Awards! https://youngimpact.nl/stemmen/#sander-bos-iris-koopman
Let’s come in action like Sander and make social impact! Our Enactus student teams are working hard on their new #EnactusCare platform. Visit the website to find out how you can help out others in your own neighbourhood, during the COVID-19 outbreak. https://www.enactuscaresnl.com/