The article I wrote last week about the Marshall Simonds Middle School students protesting the school’s forced indoctrination of Pride Month could have been a Feel-Good Friday because of the pleasant surprise of young people standing up for themselves and for their country. The indoctrination that students receive in public (and sometimes private) education to follow the prescribed LGBTQ+ narrative while encouraging them to hate themselves, hate the “other,” and to hate their country seems to have no bottom.

Equally egregious is the embedded socialist mantras of universal basic income, union activism, along with the evils of capitalism being pushed as the way the world should work. True capitalism, and the freedom to pursue entrepreneurship, is rarely encouraged or presented as a positive step toward a career future. It’s no wonder that 26 percent of today’s workforce is talking about quitting their jobs to find another one. When you equip them for this vicious cycle of always wanting more without the requisite company loyalty and skills to back up deserving more, you set a generation up for failure, rather than success.

So, this story of a group of Narberth, Pennsylvania, students from Lower Merion High School is another pleasant surprise and a palate cleanser. When these students found out their favorite community ice cream store was slated to close, 15 of them decided to run the shop for the summer—with no outside capital or help from their parents—all on their own.

Young people learning how to not only run a business, but contribute to their community gets the nod for this week’s Feel-Good Friday.

When a group of Lower Merion High School students found out that one of their favorite local ice cream shops was closing, they stepped right in.

Fifteen kids aren’t just working at Narberth Scoops this summer, they’re running it, doing everything from budgets to schedules this summer.

These kids are not being financed by their parents.

This is just a temporary lease on the Haverford Avenue space, which is being torn down later this year to make way for an apartment building.

And yes, the teens are running this shop themselves.

“We all live super locally, and we were all kind of just like looking for summer jobs,” says 16-year-old Ella Milby. “We thought this was a really good opportunity.”

“It was beneficial to us and the community,” adds 16-year-old Emma Maloney. “It was a win-win.”

Fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds who can see beyond themselves into how they can gain valuable work experience, management skills, as well as impact their community, is a rare thing. Bravo to their parents and the teachers that poured into them a proper respect for how capitalism enhances the world rather than destroys it.

Bassetts Ice Cream is the major provider for the Narbeth Scoops shop. The company not only supplied their product wholesale for these young people to sell retail, but they also provided freezers. Then every aspect of the business was handled by these teenagers from scheduling, to budgets, to social media.

“This is an opportunity that not everyone gets, like, especially people our age,” says 15-year-old Aliyah Alwyn. “It’s going to help us in the future if we want to own our own businesses.”

This is a great way to deepen that seed that was clearly already planted. I guarantee you that most, if not all of these teenagers will probably choose to run their own business in the future.

They say they’ve realized how much it takes to own a business.

“We have different committees and we’re staying up until 11 p.m. each night on Zoom, trying to work out the logistics of how much a root beer float is going to cost,” Maloney says.

The young people are also chuffed over their acquisition of a soda machine in order to sell root beer floats along with the ice cream.

These enterprising young minds plan to keep Narberth Scoops open throughout the summer, seven days a week. If I were in the region, I’d make a point to frequent the shop just to support and encourage these kids’ vision and drive. Adults should champion this in our youth, every chance we get.