A state and national award-winning partnership between Dowling Catholic High School and the Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity would be valuable enough if all it did was make the world of business real for the students in Karen Soliday’s entrepreneurial studies classes.

But value of Dowling’s partnership with Greater Des Moines Habitat to operate the Habitat ReStore at Second and Holcomb avenues has been demonstrated in myriad, unforeseen ways. For one thing, the store stocks new and barely used home improvement merchandise, which has spared landfills of nearly 5 tons of construction and demolition debris – for example, a window that may have been custom-built for a $2 million home, but was rejected for aesthetic reasons by the homeowner. At a savings of up to 75 percent, the store’s customers get a shot at the high-quality merchandise they need to make cosmetic improvements to their homes.

For another thing, though community service is a hallmark at Dowling and students are required to perform 10 service hours a semester, “it’s really put me in their shoes and shown me what it’s like to worry about missing meals and not being able to afford a sink,” said Justin Otis, a senior who worked at the ReStore last year. And it’s also an avenue for teenagers to step forward and show others what they’re made of. Too often, it has “rubbed off on teens that they are incapable of making a difference,” Otis said. “When you are a kid, sometimes you underestimate the effect you can have on people and the good you can do.”

Megan Malone, a senior student in the advanced entrepreneurial studies class, agreed students involvement at the ReStore has helped sway public confidence in her generation in a more positive direction. “Some adults say all teenagers care about is partying and having fun,” she explained. “We are more than they think we are. You don’t have to be 30 to run a business and do important things.”

The ReStore also gives high school students a glimpse of how the business world actually operates. “It shows you what life is going to be like,” said senior Thomas Oertli. “We’re all assigned to our own jobs, but we have to work together. You can’t always be a follower.”

It’s the kind of experience Brenda Chenchar, the school’s communications and marketing director and a 1983 alumna, wishes had been required when she was a Dowling student. “Anyone who has volunteered knows you get more than what you gave,” she said. “To introduce them to what volunteer work is and how rewarding it is sets them up as an adult. Not having experienced it, I am not as quick to step in.”

STATE, NATIONAL RECOGNITION

With all that going for the program, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it has been tabbed for prominent awards, including the recently announced $7,500 Leavey Award for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education endowed by the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation of Los Angeles and given annually by the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge, Pa. The award, which will be one of 13 presented in Philadelphia in March, celebrates not only Soliday’s innovative approach to teaching the free enterprise system, but also the benefits received by the community.

“It’s a rather prestigious award, not only because just a few are chosen, but also because elementary through post-secondary teachers compete for it, so the competition is wide open,” Soliday said.

The program also was awarded a 2005 Governor’s Youth Leadership Award for the students’ work toward reducing substandard housing in Greater Des Moines and reducing landfill waste while learning business principles. In their application for that award, the students wrote: “No, we are not typical high school students. … We are risk takers, community activists, energetic volunteers, enthusiastic motivators and passionate supporters. We are partners working for a better community. We are tomorrow’s leaders today.”

Though Habitat thrift stores are common, the one serving Greater Des Moines stands out nationally as unique. It’s the only ReStore in the country established by high school students – or, for that matter, college students – and it was entirely student run from its beginning in May 2003 until November 2004, when its success demanded it be run like a regular business with a paid staff.

Soliday’s goal when she came to Dowling in 1999 was to develop an entrepreneurial studies program that would help students learn about the workings of the free enterprise system by actually participating in it. Dan Malloy, the school’s counselor, an adviser for the campus Habitat affiliate and member of the Greater Des Moines affiliate’s family selection committee, knew of her goals and had seen an example of a home improvement thrift shop when he took students to North Carolina several years ago to help build a Habitat house. In January 2003, they began shaping a plan that responded to both Soliday’s curriculum goals and Malloy’s interest in increasing the public’s awareness of the Dowling Habitat affiliate.

The venture was set up just as a typical business would be, with a formal business plan and a legally binding partnership agreement. The Habitat affiliate’s accumulation of donated home improvement items provided inventory, a 5,000-square-foot warehouse space at 2341 Second Ave. was cleared and the Restore officially opened in May 2003.

DNR GRANT ALLOWS EXPANSION

Within a year, the business plan was outdated. Customers were demanding more inventory, but there was no space for expansion. The hours of service were limited by students’ availability during the school day and on Saturday mornings. The student business leaders recognized that responding to market demands would require hiring a paid staff and acquiring additional space. The store’s cash flow had been positive, but with average sales of about $2,000 a month, it wasn’t healthy enough to finance the expansion.

The resourceful students wrote a successful proposal for a $49,000 business expansion grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. The money allowed them to expand the store to 11,000 square feet and hire a full-time store manager, Tony Thompson. As a result, average monthly sales increased to about $20,000, and in January, sales were on track to break $30,000, Thompson said.

Profits are shared, with the bulk going to the Greater Des Moines Habitat affiliate. Second-quarter profits in the current fiscal year were $71,000, $69,000 of which went to the affiliate to pay four full-time and two part-time workers and cover some overhead costs. That allows Habitat to use its funds to build safe, clean housing for some of the 25,000 local families the Polk County Human Services Alliance says are living in inadequate or unaffordable housing. The remaining $2,000 was split between the entrepreneurial studies class and the Habitat affiliate on the Dowling campus.

Hopes are that the ReStore will eventually generate enough profit to cover 100 percent of the Greater Des Moines Habitat affiliate’s operational costs, said Mark Elliott, its director of development. “Habitat is a unique philanthropy,” he said. “We invest in the community we exist in, which requires us to raise all the sticks-and-bricks costs, but also the program costs any non-profit or developer would have. We’re also a mortgage banker. We’re sustaining three programs.

“Good business goes hand-in-hand with good community commitment,” he continued. “You don’t exist in a vacuum, and the more you improve a community in which you do business, the more you improve the environment in which you do business.”

SKILLS TRANSFERRABLE

Soliday said her students’ experiences at the ReStore have given them a fuller understanding of Dowling’s community service graduation requirement. “The philosophy is that we want to engrain in them the need to give back to their community, and this allows them to do that by helping customers on a limited income or an elderly person,” she said. “I think they have begun to see, as we make a bigger profit and give back to the affiliate, the relationship with the increased number of houses built by the affiliate.”

She said the students may have been naïve about the time commitment required to run a retail business before they became involved in the entrepreneurial studies class and the ReStore. “It’s a great confidence builder for them,” she said. “Once they get down there and work in that environment, they can take ownership and see what it is they are actually able to accomplish, rather than just theorizing and trying to visualize it.”

The ReStore is an ideal setting to teach the subtle lesson is sometimes overlooked in a profit-driven economy: that volunteerism and community service are as important as learning about balance sheets and customer-service skills, she said.

“In a capitalist economy that is so profit driven, it’s hard for students to see that side of it,” Soliday explained. “As a business owner, you should think beyond personal gain. In a free enterprise system or capitalist economy, there are responsibilities and it’s up to all of us to help one another if our society is going to continue to be free.”

It’s been an eye-opener for students, who may not understand the depths of poverty in Greater Des Moines, according to Soliday. “I had one student who said it made him feel really good to be able to help a customer find the plumbing fixtures he needed and be able to acquire everything he needed for less than $50,” she said. “They don’t realize there are people who have to decide between spending that $50 on food or on fixing up their house. When you see somebody get a faucet for $5 or a toilet for $25, that’s when it brings it home to them that they are really doing something for others.”

Regardless of what fields they plan to go into – Otis, for example, plans to be a doctor, Oertli is considering a career in sports medicine and Malone is choosing between about a half-dozen careers – the skills they learn in entrepreneurial studies are transferable outside the world of retail sales.

“They earn confidence in their own decision-making capabilities and know that communication is a huge aspect, no matter what line of business or work they are going into,” Soliday said. “They realize they can never do it alone, so they need to be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses so they can work with other people.”

“Almost everything in this world, like growing up and getting a career, is all about interacting with different people,” Otis said.

Beth Dalbey can be reached by e-mail at bethdalbey@bpcdm.com.

‘THE ULTIMATE HOME-IMPROVEMENT THRIFT STORE’

That isn’t just an effective marketing pitch. The Greater Des Moines Habitat for Humanity ReStore offers new and lightly used home improvement materials at discounts of up to 75 percent, including some brand-new items directly from the showroom floor and some one-of-a-kind custom-made windows and doors. Dowling Catholic High School entrepreneurial studies students earn credit and community service hours by working in the ReStore.

Where: 2341 Second Ave. (store entrance on Holcomb Avenue)

Hours: 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Tuesday-Friday; 8 a.m. – 4 p.m., Saturday

Phone: 309-0224

E-mail: restore@dmhabitat.org

Web site: www.dmhabitatrestore.org

Dowling Catholic High School teacher Karen Soliday recently received a Leavey Award for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education, a $7,500 cash award from the Freedoms Foundation. Students in Soliday’s entrepreneurial studies classes planned and continue to staff the Habitat ReStore, an activity that matches the award criteria to honor teachers who “unleash the entrepreneurial skills of their students at the elementary, junior high school, high school and college level.”