A group of Grade 6/7 students have taken a school project and turned it into a small business geared to making money for the Chatham-Kent Hospice.
The school project at Monsignor Uyen Catholic School in Chatham is part of the Learning Partnership Entrepreneurial Adventure, a program that helps students learn how to start a small business.
According to the program website, Entrepreneurial Adventure is all about sparking students’ natural curiosity, intelligence and passion to seize an opportunity to take their ideas to market – and discover just what they can do.
The program is a hands-on entrepreneurial journey for students in grades K-12. It is designed to develop students’ enterprising spirit, financial literacy, innovative thinking and social responsibility. To date, these student business ventures have raised $2.9 million for charities.
Entrepreneurial Adventure helps develop the next generation of entrepreneurs by teaching essential 21st century skills, such as marketing, business planning, team building and the importance of social responsibility. Together with teachers and volunteer business mentors, students develop innovative business ventures that raise money for charities.
Students Cristiano Machado and Evan Hollis, two members of the four-person team with Jere Lagace-Carter and Nathan Hanson, explained their business plan.
Selling T-shirts, polo shirts, drawstring bags and baseball caps with their company name – cenj (their four first-name initials), the group developed a web site at cenjclothing.weebly.com to take orders from people from now until the end of May with all proceeds going to the Chatham-Kent Hospice.
“We thought T-shirts could make a good profit; not to small and not too high,” Machado said. “My dad has a roofing business and he gets shirts for his staff so he helped us figure it out.”
Machado designed the logo, and Hollis said the group shares the other rolls.
“Cristiano designed the logo but we will share the rolls. We all will go out and sell, be treasurer, receive payments,” Hollis said. “The teacher guided us through the program, but then we took it from there and a person from the program is supposed to come to our class this week.”
In choosing a charity, Machado said they wanted to pick something important to the community.
“We thought the Hospice has so many volunteers and wanted to pitch in. It’s one of the organizations Chatham really needs for support,” he noted.
The group of four started selling this past weekend in their own areas and hope the website will take their sales to the next level. Their products are available in different colours and sizes and any inquiries can be sent to c.e.n.j.clothing@gmail.com or go to cenjclothing.weebly.com.
