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2007-08-21 issue:

Award of $24,000 aids entrepreneur

Goshen College student demonstrated social entrepreneurship at young age.

by Kelli Yoder

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A pony-powered environmental lawn-mowing service established Kathryn Birky as a socially conscious entrepreneur when she was only 12. And this year, the business plan for the service helped the Goshen (Ind.) College sophomore win a $24,000 young entrepreneur scholarship.


A pony-powered environmental lawn-mowing service established Kathryn Birky as a socially conscious entrepreneur when she was only 12 years old. Photo provided.

The award, given annually by the National Association for the Self- Employed (NASE), is a national prize for a student who shows interest and promise in entrepreneurship.

Birky, a communication major from Glenn, Mich., demonstrated both aptitudes when she and her brother began researching environmentally friendly ways to mow the lawn six years ago. They decided to try a horse-powered reel mower, a type of nonmotorized mower normally sold to the Amish.

“We enthusiastically purchased a pony named Clementine, built a barn and took driving lessons,” Birky wrote in the essay describing her business plan for the scholarship competition.

After advertising the service with flyers explaining the advantages to mowing without using gasoline, Birky says, “we accepted as many lawns as Clementine could handle.” They have kept the business going every summer since.

Entrepreneurship is often thought of as a way to be self-sufficient, but for Birky the value goes far beyond that.

“I’m personally more interested in social entrepreneurship, which is what activists do to try to create social change,” she says. “I think social entrepreneurs aren’t doing it for the money or for their local community; they’re doing it to improve their society in the bigger picture.”
Her success at raising social awareness while launching a business became apparent in its first year and continued.

“When I began mowing lawns with a pony, I was simply attempting to respect the earth with my decisions. Since then, I have seen it grow in ways I never imagined,” she wrote in her essay for the scholarship.

Soon their small but unique business operation was receiving national attention with stories in the Detroit Free Press and the Boston Globe. Then a Canadian author mentioned the business in her book, and Birky and her brother met the governor of Michigan. For Birky, it was especially rewarding that the attention influenced others to seek alternatives to gas-powered mowers.

After their first summer, they were selected to represent the United States at the United Nations International Children’s Conference on the Environment, which led to leadership opportunities at other U.N. conferences and to meetings with corporate and political leaders.
Though she doesn’t plan to continue the mowing business, her values haven’t shifted. She hopes to be an independent environmental writer.

“If I can convince individual readers to make their everyday decisions with this awareness in mind, their united actions will create a greener world and a brighter future,” she says.

She is already on her way to achieving this, having won the scholarship. Anyone across the nation who is a child of an NASE member can apply for the award. Both of Birky’s parents are members of the organization as clinical social workers with private practices.

Birky’s current entrepreneurial endeavor holds potential for her continued success. She is working with a publisher on her first book, called Friendship with Horses, information for teens about training horses.

Kelli Yoder writes for Goshen College.

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