Social studies to social venture: Missouri teen’s micro business helps students across the globe

Editor’s note: The following story was produced through a paid partnership with MOSourceLink, which boasts a mission to help entrepreneurs and small businesses across the state of Missouri grow and succeed by providing free, easy access to the help they need — when they need it.

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ST. LOUIS — It wasn’t an entrepreneurship course that inspired Noah Temple to start his coffee and tea social enterprise, he shared; it was his seventh grade history class.

Noah — now a senior at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis — launched Junior Java Coffee in the fall of 2019 after learning about how imperialism has resulted in many children in developing countries not having equal access to education and the supplies they need, he explained.

“Knowing that coffee and tea were the second and third most-consumed beverages in the world — behind water, of course — I knew I could use that to fuel and draw more attention toward education equity,” he continued.

For every bag of specialty coffee and tea that is sold online or at pop up events, Junior Java — with the slogan “coffee for you, education for all” — donates $5 worth of school supplies to children in need around the world.

“We source the coffee from some of the best coffee regions like Ecuador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Colombia,” Noah said. “It’s cool how — the regions we get the coffee from — our impact is going back there, as well, through our charitable partner.”

“Then through our charitable partner, when we make a donation, that donation is multiplied on top of that through government grants that they get,” he added.

To date, Noah noted, Junior Java has donated more than $3,000 in school supplies and has given more than $5,000 to other community organizations like this church’s youth program and his school’s DECA program.

“Once you get to talking to (Noah) and get to know him, you find out what an exceptional person he is and you can’t help but love him and what he does,” said Aaron Banks — youth workforce initiatives coordinator for the Missouri AfterSchool Network — who first met Noah at the organization’s Missouri Youth Entrepreneurship Pitch Challenge.

“He roasts his own beans and the whole reason that he got into roasting coffee was because he wanted to help people,” Banks added. “So his goal was not necessarily to make money, but to be able to earn money that he could donate.”

Noah Temple, a senior at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, sells blends from his Junior Java Coffee brand during a popup event; photo courtesy of Junior Java Coffee

The Missouri AfterSchool Network — which builds partnerships and systems across the state that improve, support and sustain high-quality after school programs — has been instrumental in helping Junior Java to grow and expand its impact through its pitch competition and youth marketplace at its annual conference, said Noah. He placed second in the 2023 Missouri Youth Entrepreneurship Pitch Challenge but won the national challenge and also received the $1,000 Christopher Stallworth Award Scholarship from the Charles Mott Foundation.

“The last youth marketplace I went to, I was able to raise over $900 worth of school supplies in about just an hour,” he added. “It was amazing.”

Noah, however, isn’t just focused on educational resources in other countries, he noted. He’s also doing his part to increase access to entrepreneurial-focused education for middle schoolers with his Coffee Kidz program.

“I’m currently creating my own curriculum in that area at the middle school level to be able to teach young entrepreneurs and people interested in business at that younger level, as I was,” he said, “and give them the support and resources they need to be able to learn and grow. Because when I was in middle school, it was a lot of trial and error, and I want to be able to ensure that other children like me who have a business idea — especially one that is a social enterprise, as well — that they have the resources that they need.”

He’s also been able to share his entrepreneurial experience through speaking engagements with peers in St. Louis, as well as at the National Black MBA Association Leaders of Tomorrow Summit, Noah said.

He plans to continue his business when he goes off to college (his top choice is the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, where he attended a recent summer program.)

The Missouri AfterSchool Network also invited Noah to be a guest speaker at its pitch competition this year, Banks said.

“We are just really impressed with him and impressed with his business,” Banks continued. “Every chance we get, we invite him to events that we hold that there will be other students there — similar in age to him — and give him an opportunity to talk to them and talk about what he does and why he does it and offer advice to them.”

Like Noah, the Missouri AfterSchool Network understand the value of educating students on an entrepreneurial mindset, Banks said.

“What we’re trying to do is not necessarily create future business owners or future entrepreneurs,” he explained. “What we’ve kind of learned is that the same skill sets and mindsets that entrepreneurs have are the same kinds of things that will help a person later in life. Any adult, if they had the mindset of an entrepreneur or the skills that entrepreneurs have, they’re going to be more successful in everything that they do.

“So that’s why we work to get entrepreneurship education into the after-school spaces, it’s to help these students develop and become better, future adults.”