By: Myles Robinson I Published: March 24, 2025
On Mar. 20, Kean University’s Human Rights Institute hosted the Entrepreneur Fair as part of their Human Rights Week, where creativity, passion, and leadership flowed through the Miron Student Center. Capping this weeks events off with a headlining event, including keynote speakers David Hogg and Tiana Day
Tables were set around the Cougar Patent Pursuit statue and the perimeter of the Miron Student Center (MSC) atrium, with Kean students bringing various small-owned businesses to the campus community.
MSC was filled with the foot traffic of Kean students leaving class and heading for lunch or someplace comfortable to sit. Their foot patter was drowned out by the smooth voices of Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, and Ashanti that pumped through the MSC Atrium speakers. However, it wasn’t just the sounds of “What’s Luv?” that filled the air that day…
The Human Rights organization’s mission is to strive, inspire, and shine a light on human rights issues and violations across the globe while also inspiring the next generation of leaders to create a more just and peaceful world, as mentioned on their home page. It presented its Human Rights Week on Mar. 17 with the film screening of “I AM GEN-Z” and concluded on Mar. 21 with the 17th annual Human Rights Conference with Hogg and Day.
Mindy Goldstein, the program coordinator, commented about the overall theme for this semester’s Human Rights Week:
“Every generation has its hand in human rights, and young people are always leading the charge when it comes to advocating for change or advocating for those who can’t speak for themselves, and so we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge Gen-Z and what they are doing differently than generations that have come before them.”
Goldstein, who has been with the Human Rights organization for about three years now, shares her personal opinion on Generation “Zoomer”, those born in 1997 through 2012:
“Gen Z cares about everyone and really wants to advocate for paving the way and making a better way for people.”
The bettering of ourselves and others is what Generation Z is all about. A great way to start is by doing just that; creating something you are passionate about and finding a way to do it sufficiently and efficiently for others and charging them.
The nature of entrepreneurship forces a business owner to take significant risks that might reap potential benefits. Some of the businesses present at the entrepreneur fair included tarot reading by sophomore psychology major Leannette Alvarado, customizable t-shirt printing by Faith Clark, a junior psychology major, and Fever Dream—an art-based business where senior business major Taylor Fleming creates hand-drawn bookmarks and characters, while Gabrielle Paini designs them digitally
“We just want to give Gen-Z entrepreneurs a voice, to give them a platform to make some more money, get the word out for the business, and even just make connections; it definitely could be hard when you have a small business to make connections and to have an outreach, so this an opportunity for them [Gen-Z Entrepreneurs] to do so,” said Clark.
Clark is also a student representative of the Human Rights Institute who works as the communication and outreach coordinator. Her role is to spread awareness and gauge attention towards specific events.
What ended as a successful turnout for multiple businesses seizing the chance to showcase their talents and their passions was also a very good way for the Human Rights Institute to bring attention and awareness to their mission of highlighting Gen Z.
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