Training your brain to be business minded gets a Startup to Success with the Prince George YMCA program for Junior Achievers.
That’s right, during this Northern BC pilot project teens 16 to 18 years old learn to create and run their own business during a 16-week course and get paid while they’re learning.
In groups of five, teens create their business model, fine tune it where they need to and execute all under the guidance of well-established business people who are volunteering their mentorship skills.
“Junior Achievers BC (JABC) put up the seed money for each group to develop their business and this is a partnership between the YMCA Prince George and JABC,” Mary Paz Michel, youth community action coordinator, Northern BC, said.
There are three stages to the Startup to Success including life skills, like leadership, communication and teamwork. The next stage is business development and the third is personal finances, Michel added.
“This program will give strength to the youth and open their minds to the future, especially in this global economy where everything is changing so quickly,” she said.
Michel said the Y didn’t anticipate a high demand for the program and were expecting about 10 or 12 youth to register but it reached capacity with 20 in the program with a waiting list already in place for the next program.
When the group of 20 teens gathered at the inaugural Startup to Success meeting at the Highland Development Centre on Thursday, March 13 most of them were strangers to one another.
Michel organized the teens into smaller groups which saw Amy Pryschlak, 16, Felicia Cailleaux-Cauley, 18, Dayton Fraser, 16, Azriel McGowan-Cox, 18 and Chantelle LeClaire, 16, become team Party Packz.
“We were told that we’re kind of on your own now but they’re here to help,” Azriel said.
In the initial stages of development the group’s Party Packz vision was to encompass all it took to streamline the party planning process and decorating aspects of any occasion for parents with young children but once the logistics of it was researched the team decided to downsize their aspirations to offer all-occasion goodie bags.
“We are currently looking at pricing, scoping out where we’re going to get stuff, what we’re going to put in the bags and getting the design for the bags ready,” Felicia said.
“We’ll do custom orders for different age groups,” Amy added.
Some members of the group use notebooks to keep track of their progress while laptops are used for research.
“And I have been doing some research on giving money to charity from proceeds of the business,” Azriel said.
Cameron Braun, client relationship manager at Scotiabank, is the team’s volunteer advisor.
“Cameron is awesome,” Amy said.
“He is very straight forward and very helpful. He checks in on things and makes sure we have all the things we need while still encouraging us to do it on our own as we try to figure it out.”
“And he can take a joke,” Azriel smiled.
“Also what’s very nice is to have a straight-forward answers when we’re looking for them rather than someone hinting towards answers, which I don’t like. If you’re going to make me guess, I’m just going to stop asking.”
During the business development stage, coming to the realization that they would have to downsize their ideas was the most challenging part of the process, Azriel added.
“Deciding what kinds of things we would keep, what kind of things we would take away from the project in the end. But the whole downsizing the project to little goodie bags has been really beneficial towards the start up of this whole thing.
“It’s easier in a sense.”
“It helped relieve the stress a little bit because trying to locate everything especially the bigger pieces that we needed would have been harder than just finding the stuff we need for the goodie bags,” Felicia said.
Amy said team communication was a bit of a challenge at the start.
“But we eventually got over it,” Amy smiled.
“I think it was just the initial awkwardness of being tossed into a group of people we never met before,” Azriel added.
Dayton is the only male in the group and said he’s getting used to being the only ‘dude’ as Amy called him.
“My mom told me about the program and she thought it would be a good thing to have on my resume and I thought it would be a good opportunity to make a little money and learn about business,” Dayton said.
“And they get to keep the money they make from the business, too,” Braun the advisor said.
“When I saw this volunteer opportunity was about youth entrepreneurship and something I wasn’t involved with in school, growing up playing video games, I was very impressed that they all sought this out as an opportunity and it’s really cool on my end to be a part of this, providing some insight from my experience.”
During the business development stage of the program Braun said he was impressed with the students’ ideas.
“I was just glad I was on this end of it and didn’t have to come up with ideas for a new business because I was certainly stumped,” Braun said.
“So I was very impressed with all the different ideas that came up.”
Once the business plan is finalized and executed at the end of June, Prince George parents of young children will be able to reach out to Party Packz to place their orders and The Citizen will provide updates to the story as things progress.
For more information about the Startup to Success program visit nbc.ymca.ca/youth-services/startup-to-success/.
