VEI often receives letters from our teacher-facilitators and alumni expressing their appreciation for the unique learning opportunities that VEI provides.  We wanted to share one such letter with you from Adam Massey, a VE teacher from Greer High School in South Carolina that illustrates the impact the VEI experience has had on his students.    We thank you, Adam,  and your fellow VEI colleagues across the country for your passion and commitment in empowering and motivating America’s youth to become our future entrepreneurs and business leaders.
–Iris Blanc, Executive Director

I am writing to express my sincere gratitude for what you have done to build and develop the Virtual Enterprises International program in the United States.  The 2011-12 school year marks my six as a VE coordinator.  With each passing year, I am reminded that the impact this program has had on my students is simply immeasurable.

In my time as a coordinator, I have witnessed students grow in business understanding, comprehension, decision-making and, most importantly, self-confidence.  It is vital that students are pushed outside of the standard lines and boundaries of educational practice and challenged not only to learn concepts and theory, but to implement the concepts and theory into real-world situations that allow them to make decisions and strengthen the links between their knowledge and observed results. Virtual Enterprise allows that to happen.

I come from a business background and am always pushing my students to move beyond common educational ideas and challenge them to ask, “How would this work in the real world and what might the results be?”  During my college years I was able to take the working theory and knowledge of marketing and management principals and implement those ideas though internships and practicum opportunities.  Those experiences were the most worthwhile opportunities of my college career.  VE is as close as students can get to the same thing in a high school setting, and it is amazing.  Work release and job shadowing provide solid base-level interaction and observation, but VE challenges students to think from the top down rather than from the bottom up.  My students who have held jobs during the school year continually tell me how the program has made them better workers and allowed them to take on more responsibility at their jobs because they grasp higher-level concepts that most students their age could only dream of.

Over the years, roughly 85% of the students who entered my VE program have gone on to further their education at various colleges and universities here in South Carolina and the surrounding states.The greatest joy that I take in being a coordinator is when a college freshman enrolled in a business major at a university returns to visit and tells me that his or her professors have asked them where they gained their business knowledge because they are functioning at the level of sophomores and juniors.  I have students who have continued in college to major in management, marketing, finance, economics, fashion design and veterinary studies, all with hopes of opening their own businesses in the years to come. Each student I talk to credits this program with being a major stepping stone on their path to success.