Eighth Grade Business Project Honors Soud ’16

Donation will Fund a Medical Mission to Mongolia



Each year, eighth grade students at Bolles participate in a business project through the Economics course. Student groups create a “business” and hold a two-day fair during the sixth and seventh grade lunch periods for the products to be sold. The money collected through the business fair is donated to a worthy cause. This year, the eighth grade donated $2,780 to Wolfson Children’s Hospital in memory of classmate Jonathan Soud, who passed away in 2010 after a courageous battle with leukemia.

The project provides a lesson both in economics and community service. The projects include a business proposal and plan including calculating costs of making the product or providing the service, advertising, rental space, and other start-up costs. After the first day of the fair, students have an opportunity to adjust prices due to increased or decreased demand or competition from other groups selling similar products. Products or services included bracelets, hats and t-shirts, sunglasses, pencil pouches, and a putting green.

The students vote on a charity to donate their earnings as a class. Their contribution will go to a special project at Wolfson Children’s Hospital, funding a trip to Mongolia to diagnose and treat children with blood cancers. The trip came to fruition from Jonathan mentioning to one of his doctors that he wanted to visit Mongolia after watching a television program on the country during chemotherapy. Coincidentally, Jonathan’s primary hematologist-oncologist, Dr. Eric Sandler, had been approached years earlier about going to Mongolia to train doctors how to treat pediatric blood cancers. Dr. Sandler couldn’t get the funding to make the trip at the time. However, funds donated to the hospital in Jonathan’s memory will enable Dr. Sandler, a nurse, and a pharmacist from the pediatric oncology unit to travel to Mongolia to work in a hospital.

In addition to the eighth grade class, several of the donors include members of the National Association for College Admission Counseling as colleagues of Jonathan’s father, Steve Soud, Director of College Counseling at Bolles. Soud will also being travelling to Mongolia with his son Paul ’09 and daughter Natalie ’02. The group will leave for Mongolia on June 29 and be there for two weeks.

“As part of our own healing process, my surviving son, daughter, and I will be paying our own way and working at an orphanage in Ulaanbaatar while the medical professionals are teaching at the hospital,” Steve Soud said.

Soud visited the Bartram Campus in May to accept a token of the donation from the eighth grade class. He also spoke to the students about the upcoming trip to Mongolia and how their donation helped to make the medical mission possible.