Seventh-grade entrepreneurs market product for Red Ribbon Week

Seventh-graders in Jan Johnson's Home and Careers class at the A.D. Oliver Middle School recently got a taste of what it's like to be in business for themselves. With the help of SUNY Brockport's Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team, the seventh-graders developed a business plan and company name, learned of the meaning of entrepreneurship, produced a product, developed the marketing plan and sales approaches and discussed profit and loss.

SIFE is a non-profit organization that gives college students the tools to learn the free enterprise system in a real working situation. SIFE challenges, students on more than 800 college campuses worldwide to take what they're learning in the classroom and use their knowledge to better their communities.

Go For Sweets Instead of Drugs was the company name the seventh-graders came up with. They made 211 Halloween bags to sell during Red Ribbon Week in an effort to support drug-free lifestyles. The seventh-graders used material with a Halloween theme, filled them with candy, put tags with a drug-free message on each, and tied each one with ribbon. They also designed posters, announcements and put together a display case to help sell their product. Each student was given nine bags to sell along with a business card with his or her name on it.

The SIFE team taught the young entrepreneurs how to figure out what to charge for the new product, taking into consideration the cost of materials and the cost of a pizza party to celebrate their sales success. Brian Chiumento, a senior and the CEO of the SIFE team, gave some sales tips and taught the students about profit and loss. The students decided to sell the bags for $1 each and after paying for expenses they applied the profit to a Red Ribbon Week charity.

Samantha Cameron, a junior at the college, was the project leader. "The goal of this project was to teach the students about entrepreneurship," she said. "We developed an entrepreneur and marketing kit for the students to help budding entrepreneurs get their plans off the ground."

Susan Stites-Doe, Ph.D., an advisor of the Brockport SIFE program, said the SIFE team did it all. "They developed a teaching plan and worked with the seventh-graders to put their plan into place," she said. "It was really exciting to see how the students took to this project. When it came time to have volunteers to sell the Halloween bags, so many of them wanted to volunteer that we needed to draw names."