Inside Out Club's New Teen Program Manager Aims To Empower Students

NAPERVILLE, IL — All roads seem to have led Gina Curtis to her most recent job as the new Teen Program Manager for the Naperville-based Inside Out Club. Curtis, a former educator and school administrator told Patch she hopes to connect more schools with the workshops and camps the organization offers that are geared at "building confidence in young people so that you can go out in the real world."

Curtis's first encounter with Inside Out Club happened when her daughter, who is now 10, was four or five years old. She told Patch she got her daughter involved in the group's weekend workshops because "there are really not a lot of opportunities for young children to build a service mindset."

A former social studies teacher at Glenbard West High School, Curtis continued to work closely with Inside Out Club after she founded Arrow Academy, a private school that offered Montessori-inspired education for children kindergarten through eighth grade.

There, her students were involved in several service projects facilitated by Inside Out Academy.

“They really enjoyed the projects," Curtis said. "They learned a lot about community organizations."

In her new role, Curtis hopes to keep inspiring enthusiasm for service in older children.

She told Patch that the club's programs offer "such a great opportunity to keep building that service mindset and social emotional [learning] for junior high and high school students."

"They need it just as much as the elementary learners do," she said.

Curtis said her background in education and entrepreneurship makes her well-suited to work on program such as Inside Out Club's Business Designers for Good (BD4G) workshop, which is currently offered at Jefferson Junior High School. BD4G helps students "start exploring what it's like to build a business."

The program culminates in a Shark Tank-inspired pitch session, with prizes going to the winning student.

High schoolers can hone their business acumen with the Skills Box 10 workshop. Students learn how to organize and run a fundraiser, developing "soft skills and technical skills that they’re going to need in the real world," including networking, communication and more, Curtis told Patch.

Inside Out Club also offers shorter programs for high school students, she said.

Curtis emphasized that she and Inside Out Club aim to make it easy for schools to offer the workshops, whether with a club mentor running them or with a school staff member, whom they will train and equip with the needed materials.

"We make it really easy," she said.

Once students have the tools they gain from Inside Out Club, they can "absolutely take it to the next level," Curtis said.

They might even bring a business idea to life that can "benefit the community or benefit the world."

Click the link to learn more about Inside Out Club.