A young social entrepreneur is born from Philly’s new U School

“Welcome to the poverty cycle, where everyone is the same and they put stereotypes to criticize you, when you go out of your way to feed your family they do anything to manipulate you. How you act and how you dress, you see those films about you? Why do you put us in this category? Why is my ethnicity distressing you?”

That’s an excerpt from a poem called “Freeze,” written by U School student Anthony Rivera. It’s not your typical high school poem, and because he lacks what The Philadelphia Public School Notebook described in a recent profile as a “solid home foundation,” River is not your typical high school student.

Rivera was chosen to receive this year’s National Liberty Museum‘s Young Heroes Award for “championing liberty” through his actions.

The young Rivera is also a budding social entrepreneur. A graduate of the Future Project, a program that prompts students to rethink school culture, Rivera told the Notebook his dream is to launch a social enterprise that helps low-income students like himself express themselves in a culturally tolerant space.

Rivera calls his dream project The Golden Ticket, and we hope he keeps chasing after it.