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Michael and Arlene Green:
Leading By Example
by Amy Rauch Neilson

Parents always want the best for their children. But what about when your children surpass your wildest dreams? That’s what happened to Michael and Arlene Green of Stuart, Fl., parents of two successful entrepreneurial and socially responsible daughters. Devon, 15, and Jessie, 9, have raised more than a quarter of a million dollars for local charities over the past decade through their business, Devon’s Heal the World and Jessie Too, www.devonshealtheworld.com.

A Snowball Effect
Michael says that he never could have guessed that what started out as a simple trip to the store to recycle some cans could snowball into a successful business. “In 1996, when Devon was only five, a neighbor of ours had a party. They served soda in aluminum cans. After the party, they offered the empty cans to Devon so that she could recycle them,”
he explains.

Michael saw the occasion as an opportunity to teach and encourage Devon. “She seemed very interested in following through with this idea, so the following Monday, I took her to the local recycling plant. She received about two dollars for her haul. I showed her how to make a bank deposit so that she could save half of her money.

“Since Devon had a special love for animals and always wanted to visit the Humane Society, we discussed how cool it would be to bring the animals a present. She decided to use part of her remaining dollar to buy a can of cat food,” he says. “We stopped by the grocery store, and then on to the shelter. Devon made her first charitable contribution that day. Her mother and I had no idea that a lifetime of giving may also have been born.”

Ingredients of Success
Kids often come up with ideas of how they can contribute to the world around them. How their parents respond, Michael says, plays a large role in how far the idea will go.

“Arlene and I always have taken our children seriously,” he says. “So when Devon asked to build upon this experience, we sat down as a family and discussed how we could work together to set her up for success.

“We took her to several neighbors, all of whom agreed to save cans for her. However, since recycling services in our community are not provided to businesses, there was a need that Devon’s idea could meet. We shared this idea with her, and she immediately began ‘cold-calling’ businesses everywhere we went, seeking out new customers.”

Arlene agrees that taking a child’s ideas seriously is the key. “We supported her by encouraging her, transporting her, and teaching her, but most importantly by taking her seriously,” she says. Ditto for Devon’s younger sister, Jessie, when she asked to join the business at age five.

Learning opportunities
Taking Devon seriously was just the start. The Greens also offered their daughter encouragement and looked for opportunities to continue to educate her in those early days. “After a few months, Devon’s weekly haul was bringing in about three dollars a week,” Michael says. “I decided to use her business as an opportunity to teach a math lesson. Since thirty cents was ten percent of three dollars, I showed her how to move the decimal point one place to find ten percent.

“As a result, ten percent became the initial portion of the business proceeds designated for charity. This allowed her to buy a can of cat food every week, or save up for a more expensive bag of cat treats. Soon thereafter, I showed Devon how to calculate twenty percent, thirty percent and so on. This opened up even greater possibilities for Devon’s charity missions.”

Mirror images
Michael and Arlene are always conscious of the fact that they are setting examples for their daughters. They realized that if they wanted Devon and Jessie to walk the walk, they had to be willing to do the same. “The last and most important point would be to be the person you want your children to become. As parents, we are the most important role models in our children’s lives,” Michael says.

“We wanted to teach our children to lead others by example, but first we had to lead them by example,” Arlene says. “We wanted them to be generous and care about others, and hopefully they observed that way of thinking in our household long before they had their first fundraiser.”