There is a BIG PROBLEM

in our high school educational system today. Over 40% of students are chronically disengaged from school.

This is a waste of over 6.5 million talented young minds in the United States alone! You can read the news reports and get lost in the statistics, but a quick conversation with the youths around you will reveal that the obvious reasons for their lack of interest in school has to do with the archaic and uninspired model of cramming academic knowledge into their minds. This teaching method doesn't suit humans, who are born to to think outside the box and solve the problems we face creatively. 

Founder of lean://gap, Eddy Zhong, clearly illustrates the immensity of this issue in his TED Talk about “How School Makes Kids Less Intelligent.”

And he's not the only one, many young leaders expresses the same experiences about the deficiencies of our current high school educational system. If the goal of any society is to grow and educate the next generation of citizens who will be responsible for the well being of the world, then the investments of today should be aimed at the present through believing in the talents in all young people and supporting the growth of that talent by entrusting them to be leaders today.

Definition of Entrepreneur: a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, usually with considerable initiative and risk. a Leader.

Truth is, we are ALL entrepreneurs. Since birth, everything we did, every decision we made, we are taking initiative to understand the world and risking ourselves all the time to make progress in our lives. Why stop? What happened? When did life turn into autopilot?

What is lean://gap ?

Eddy is pursuing a mission to empower high school students to create their own futures, and we students from all over the world support this vision by committing ourselves to lean://gap, the first and only high school entrepreneurship accelerator in the world that brings students' ideas to life through an intensive 6-week summer session. At lean://gap, we'll have the opportunity to work alongside professional engineers, designers, Harvard & MIT professors, and other successful young entrepreneurs. Just like the competitions Eddy spoke about in his TED Talk, we will be executing our ideas by building prototypes and competing against other projects to acquire funding and launch our start ups. Throughout this intensive learning experience, we would emerge as battle-hardened veterans with the necessary skills and resources to confirm, create, test, and build companies that bring valuable solutions to the world.

Who are the lean://gap Stars?

Out of the 1000 applicants, and over 200 interviews, lean://gap Stars are the 40 of us chosen to participate in this revolutionary new concept of HS education. This program has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard.  We were chosen because we've demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit by persevering with our projects and our vision to better the world despite the lack of support. Each one of us have many great ideas with immense potential but unable to act upon these ideas due to the limited resources, connections, and capabilities of our unfavorable educational environments. 

Meet the Students

Still unsure how or why Entrepreneurship is a gratifying path to success and happiness?

Check out these success stories from others our age when they started out on their entrepreneurial journey:

How can you support us?

Leangap is a phenomenal opportunity for the cost of only $6,000 per student. However, without financial assistance, a number of us are unable to participate even though we worked tirelessly to be accepted. While many campaigns may have had months in advance for preparation, we Leangapstars on the other hand, have less than 2 weeks to build this campaign from scratch and raise enough fund to grasp this opportunity of a lifetime. We already see the revolutionary potential of this educational platform and we are unwilling to give up no matter how small the window of opportunity is.

Although the true cost of funding some of the students approaches $30,000, we are aiming for $13,000, because we are making efforts to acquire funds from those closest to us. However if this campaign goes beyond our goal, every bit goes to the living costs of attending the program as well as alleviating the burdens from our families and friends.

When you support us

you are not only putting these brilliant students through a revolutionary educational platform that will help create their futures, you are also validating lean://gap as a effective tool to train and educate the leaders of tomorrow. You become a visionary and an entrepreneur, just like the founders of Leangap, who see that in the near future, all high school students would have the opportunity to become the creative contributors of society that they are and not only through the path of a traditional education. 

It's bigger than us. If our campaign is successful, together we will have created a chain reaction for more young aspiring entrepreneurs founding their own companies and creating new futures for themselves. We will have played a major role in creating the new face of education.

Perks! -------> ^

and other ways to help:

1: Follow us on Twitter: @leangap_start

2: Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/leangapstars

3: Buy us coffee! 

4: Buy us a lot of coffee! XD

5: Visit our website! Share that too if you want ;)

About the coffee...

[No really. We're serious.]

If each person who visited this campaign, donated $4.45, that's enough to get a Java Chip Frappuccino from Starbucks. How easy is that? That's why it's so important that we share this campaign. If we can get at least 2,697 people to buy us coffee, we would have enough money to fund all six of our applicants.

THANK YOU

from the deepest of our hearts!