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Students have chance to show business savvy

Powerplay Young Entrepreneurs program builds knowledge of business world
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Virginia Nikkel is one of 26 students from Carolyn Shandalla’s Grade 6/7 class. She participated in the Young Entrepreneur Show by selling homemade soaps. Her business plan was to have fun and pay back the loan she took from her parents.

In a fast-paced and ever-changing economic climate, the next generation needs to have an understanding of the business world and how it functions.

Powerplay Young Entrepreneurs focuses on how to market and sell a product effectively, while making it fun and entertaining for a young audience to learn.

Envision Financial sponsored the students of Wix-Brown Elementary to take part in this program, offering them the chance to show their promise as young business men and women.

Last Friday (May 26), Wix-Brown hosted its own Young Entrepreneurs Show, where Carolyn Shandalla’s Division 2 Grade 6/7 students showcased their products and sold them to other students.

At the end of the day, students were asked to decide how they would spend their profits and were required to donate a portion of their profits to a charity of their choice.

The program builds students’ knowledge of the business world and gets their parents involved by letting them see what their kids are doing at school. Building relationships between students and their parents is another goal of the program.

Shandalla, the teacher in charge of the Powerplay program at Wix-Brown, got her  students involved to teach them about running a business and to get them involved in an activity that works with school but also turns their minds to financial matters.

“We’re building socially responsible citizens for the Wix-Brown community and for the world,” she said.

The program was an in-depth class exercise as well, as students received marks in: Health/Career, Language Arts, Math, Science, Art, Social Studies and Drama.

The event ran for about two hours, with 15 minute intervals for different class divisions of the school to come and purchase items from Shandalla’s class.

As classes changed and some students remained in the Wix-Brown gymnasium, the young entrepreneurs were encouraged to put on a show and get in front of the crowd to announce short 30-second sales, marking down their products to encourage buyer volume.

Each student was also the employee of their business and they were learning how to handle a working environment.

Each student was required to make a business plan and set out with a goal of how much they wanted to make, keeping in mind that they had to pay back the loan they had taken out to pay for start-up costs.

Danielle Hardy, a personal account representative for Envision Financial, came to the school beforehand to talk to the students about borrowing money from the bank and the process of paying back a loan.

“It was quite a success,” she said. “There is some good stuff here.”

Virginia Nikkel, one of the students, borrowed $48.23 from her parents to make homemade soaps. By heating glycerin soaps in the microwave, adding colours and essential oils and placing them in various cupcake molds she was able to make an array of different shapes and colours. Ten per cent of her profit will go to the Wellspring Foundation for Education.

Another student, Analiese Webb, made candles by borrowing $40 from her mother for supplies and heating wax to put wax into various colourful shapes and moulds. As a good business tactic, she negotiated a deal on the wax for her project as a new business.

Other products like travel pillows, stuffed animals, and cake pops were sold for a fair price, for the target audience.

For more info about Powerplay Young Entrepreneurs visit www.powerplay4success.com.