Over the weekend, Sebastian Sanders opened his first Young Billionaire Club thrift store in Houston. The opening of this thrift store shows his dedication to empowering at-risk youth for a brighter future.
Sanders’ passion for helping others began after hearing about a teammate on his Holland Middle School football team.
“We had a star player that had to miss a Saturday practice to watch his brothers and sisters,” said Sanders. “Because he missed practice, he was unable to play in the upcoming game. After hearing a story like that from a kid my age, I soon realized everybody doesn’t have the same life at home. I could go home and be a kid, play video games, and have fun, but my peers had to grow up faster and take on more of the mom and dad responsibilities in their home.”
As Sanders grew, so did his passion for helping others, and in 2017 he created the Sanders Hand organization.
“While in college, I met with my career advisor and had an idea to start a non-profit organization. I called my dad and told him about doing a backpack drive. However, my dad challenged me to do more. At the time, I didn’t know exactly what ‘more’ was, until I reached into my passions of business and community and realized, our communities need more than backpacks. We need literacy, funding and resources,” said Sanders.
The Sanders Hand organization has various programs focused on education, community and service, with locations in Houston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and an international chapter in Ghana, West Africa.
“The Young Billionaires Club is a business incubator program designed for ages 12 to 25 to learn business and financial literacy,” said Sanders. “This program focuses on a series of elements such as entrepreneurship, financial literacy, marketing, customer service and etiquette.”
The Young Billionaire Club stores will serve as on-the-job training for students.
“Everything that our students will learn in our classroom setting, they’re going to transfer to the store. They’re going to be able to take the real world experiences from the classroom straight to the workforce and apply what they’ve learned,” Sanders shared.
This also will allow the students to learn marketing in real-time, as well as practice customer service.
“They’ll learn how to market a product and how to market social media, while also learning the supply chain, how to bring in inventory, and how to track it once it’s in,” said Sanders.
Now that the Young Billionaire Club thrift store is open, they are moving forward in empowering youth.
“With every purchase, customers will unlock digital financial literacy lessons, empowering them with the knowledge to make smart financial decisions,” said Sanders.
