Today’s Most Important Lesson Wasn’t Planned

When your CEO class meets in the same building as the community’s disaster relief volunteer coordination site, you turn it into a teachable moment.

In the days following the March 10 tornado that impacted the Kankakee area, our community has come together in extraordinary ways to support those who lost homes and property.

Today our CEO students got a firsthand look at the incredible organizational efforts of the United Way of Kankakee & Iroquois Counties and the Community Foundation of Kankakee River Valley, who are coordinating joint disaster relief efforts at Asbury United Methodist Church. (Asbury has generously allowed the CEO program to use their professional conference room as our home base this quarter.)

Students learned the basics about how large-scale relief efforts are organized, coordinated, and funded. They also learned that 100% of donations to this disaster fund go directly toward helping those impacted by last week’s tornado.

Then learning turned into action.

When they saw volunteers loading a bus with tornado relief kits from UMCOR - United Methodist Committee On Relief, the students jumped in to help carry and load supplies.

Sometimes the most meaningful lessons aren’t the ones you planned for the day. And while we had other topics on the agenda, this real-world moment may have been the most important lesson of all.

Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship