Classes teach kids how to be entrepreneurs
The burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit of a group of local students will lead them to selling their 72 newly made candles at Berry College on Saturday afternoon during Mountain Day activities.
While Rome and Floyd County schools have been on fall break this week, a group of over a dozen kids who are members of the nonprofit group, Destiny Independence USA, have been trying their hand at developing their own product and marketing it, while learning the ins and outs of the skills that can lead to their financial independence.
Destiny Independence has partnered with the Berry College Campbell School of Business and Sylvan Learning Center to provide Junior Achievement classes to kids from economically disadvantaged families. Janice Hadaway, executive director of Destiny Independence, said her group is the only provider of Junior Achievement courses in the county. And having members in fourth grade through 12th grade get this kind of programming aligns with the organization’s purpose of having participating kids eventually achieve employment and financial independence.
The classes included learning the various terms of finance, to budgeting for needs and wants, practicing successful interview techniques and resume writing, said Angela Baron, executive director of Sylvan’s local center. Kids participate in a STEM activity each day as well.
Baron, along with Berry Professor of Management Paula Englis and MBA students and graduate assistants from the college, led the classes and entrepreneurship boot camp.
Berry’s business school provided seed money for students to apply their knowledge to an actual business venture. They get to decide what to do with the profits, including paying back the starter funding, putting it toward school supplies to investing it in expanding their offerings.
“The ideas come from the kids,” said Englis, adding the students picked the product, designed the label, wrote a mission statement and developed a social media marketing scheme.
Depending on the skills of each individual, the tasks of launching the business were naturally handed off to those who could do certain things best, Baron said.
“It’s fun and inspiring,” said Demetria Dawson, an eighth-grader at Pepperell Middle.
“It helps us prepare for when we’re older,” said Nene Adams, an eighthgrader at Rome Middle.
Involving kids in these activities is not about directing them to careers in business, though if that’s what they want then they are encouraged to do it, but about giving them resources they can use to meet the demands of the current economy, Englis said. This could be starting a side business to help pay for college costs or to just bring in additional income, she added. The lifetime jobs aren’t out there like they used to be, she explained, and utilizing skills like these are vital to making it as the economy shifts.
Some of the kids will be working with Berry students, who will also be showcasing the yield of their entrepreneurial projects, along with the products of student enterprises, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday on the Mountain Campus.
The partnership will continue throughout the school year, as Englis and her graduate assistants help guide the new entrepreneurs.