As a documentary photographer for 20 years, Jarrett Shecter has traveled to underdeveloped countries all around the world. In a village in South Africa, he saw the problems that residents face daily: malnourishment, demolished homes, the effects of malaria, and the brutal distances that women walk to retrieve water for their families.

“I wanted to have more hands-on involvement by trying to do things about these situations and become more of a participant and less of a spectator,” Shecter said.

He then decided to use his contacts from the photography industry to create TEEEM, The Empathic Entrepreneur Equality Mission, in 2016. The organization aims to empower social entrepreneurs and students to become innovative leaders of global nonprofits and invest in health, educational, and economic initiatives, according to teeem.org.

“I started [building TEEEM] by working in places like Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Ethiopia,” said Schecter, the president of TEEEM. “It started to flourish from there.”

The following year, he began working with high schools after realizing that students could expand their entrepreneurial and management skills while still giving back to those in need. 

“We wanted to give high school students an opportunity to get involved with these issues,” Schecter said. “It gives students an experience that will hopefully stick with them for a lifetime. Helping others is a powerful process for someone giving the aid and someone receiving the aid.”

Since TEEEM was already working with Pascack Valley’s DECA club, history teachers Leah Jerome and Marisa Mathias reached out to Schecter to receive outside help for Once Spirit, a club that educates its members on Native American history, culture, and current social issues. 

“The idea behind TEEEM is to get students in our area to use the spirit of entrepreneurship to work towards humanitarian causes and create sustainability projects,” Jerome said. “That’s why it’s such a good partnership with One Spirit because that’s our goal, too.”

The collaboration created TEEEM Lakota, a group that aims to address the needs of Native youth living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

“Ms. Jerome and I had talked to them a little about what we do in One Spirit, and they were interested in what was needed for the population of Pine Ridge,” Mathias said.

TEEEM sponsors high schools in Bergen County

Schecter and Dan Recht, the director of the school program, work with high schools by contacting their principals. 

“Right now, we’re working at Bergen County,” said Schecter, who has connected 10 schools with a developing country. “We’re working with schools that are very close to each other so that we can view how we can work with these schools successfully before we work with other towns.”

Schecter and Recht are sponsoring TEEEM Lakota on its first project, a hypnotism night in the PV auditorium on Thursday, Jan. 23. Mathias originally came up with the idea after hearing that another school hosted a similar event. 

“[TEEEM] gives us a broader audience,” Jerome said. “It gives us stronger connections in the community, more leadership outside of our schools, contacts to other students in different schools, and the financial support so we can create projects that we otherwise can’t afford to do.”

According to teeem.org, private donors fund TEEEM’s operating costs, so Schecter and Recht use those donations for schools’ projects. TEEEM Lakota representatives had to write a business proposal outlining the event, including how students will advertise, profit, and the amount of money needed. Juniors Paige Gorman, Lucy Disalvo, Ellie Kim, and Ava DeVincenzo wrote the proposal for the hypnotism night.

“It’s important in the educational process that students think out what they want to do by doing these proposals,” Schecter said. “We’re providing funds to your club, so we want to know what you’re thinking. It teaches students about the real world because people do have to create proposals.”

After completing their proposal, the representatives present their plan to TEEEM. 

“TEEEM sponsors events so that you can raise as much money as possible,” Gorman said. “All that money contributes to the event, so without them, we would have never been able to contribute enough cost for a laundry facility. With TEEEM, it’s a possibility.”

The organization also encourages the representatives to visit local businesses to sponsor the projects. For the hypnotism night, TEEEM Lakota has received donations from V’s Barbershop, Guardian Data Destruction, Yarn Diva, Higher Level Education, Hold My Knots, and Lepore’s Italian Market.

“One of TEEEM’s things when collaborating is forming an entrepreneurship,” Disalvo said, “so Dan really wanted us to talk more about how we were going to get money from businesses and how we’re going to double our profits. It was very scary, but Dan and TEEEM inspired us to raise more money and visit these businesses so that we can have bigger events than just bake sales.”