Chris Janssen: Why I Started Textbooks For Change
Our Founder, Chris, shares his experience growing T4C from a dream in his unfinished basement to a quickly expanding social enterprise
In 2012, I had an idea to collect and redistribute used textbooks to those in need and called the initiative Textbooks for Change (T4C). I remember the countless volunteer hours collecting, sorting, and scanning textbooks in the basement with my roommate and future business partner Tom Hartford. We would talk for hours about how we could make T4C a scalable and sustainable venture, but at the time we did not have the guts to pursue those dreams.
After graduation in summer 2013 I traveled to Africa and taught at the University of Finance and Banking in Kigali Rwanda. I saw first hand the dire need for quality educational material as several students studied from a single photo copied textbook. I then conducted research on entrepreneurship in Kenya and saw that the largest barrier for these entrepreneurs was having access to credit to scale their businesses and ideas. These two experiences gave me another push to continue T4C part-time when I returned home, but I was still not quite ready to fully commit.
It is crazy to think that a year ago today I was unsuccessfully applying for full time employment, and preparing to start a Halloween store to sell costumes to Western students. Here I was, an Ivey graduate without a job, and chalking the concrete of the university advertising the ‘Big Halloween Sale’. Needless to say the idea was a success and I was able to get by for another month or so as I searched for that next opportunity.
I finally came to the realization that without putting 100% of my passion and energy into T4C, I would never see it’s full potential and would always regret not taking that chance. With student debt, no financial security, and an idea, I decided to take one of the biggest risks in my life, and somehow convinced Tom to join along.
In December 2013 Tom and I started planning how to make T4C a sustainable and scalable business that was able to support us while creating an impact both locally and across the globe. It was time make this small project into something we dreamed about in that unfinished basement.
Over the past few months T4C has formed essential partnerships, expanded to five additional schools, received funding, and created the plan to scale across Ontario.
We were able to not only create a sustainable business, but send over 22,000 textbooks to African universities, distribute over $35,000 in microfinance loans, donate over $25,000 to non-profits, and reuse/recycle over 35,000 books. It is now time to recruit the team to help us scale across Ontario and significantly multiple this impact.
Although many did not fully support my decisions to go all in, I do not regret a single second. I have developed more as a person and learned more over the past few months then I have in my entire life.
It has been one hell of a ride so far, but it has only just begun.
