Hi, I’m Mark Evers and for nine months out of the year, I teach Digital and Interactive Media, Banking and Financial Systems and Virtual Business to high school students at Stony Point High School. Go Tigers!
For the next couple weeks, however, I’m leading the Junior Entrepreneurship Training program here at Stony Point. It’s been a whirlwind. I couldn’t ask for a smarter, more talented group of kids. Everyone’s really enthusiastic and seems to impress me more every day with their ideas.
Right now, as we start putting business plans together, I’m working with the kids to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their plans. We’ve gone over the major methods of business analysis: SWOT, HEPTALYSIS, PESTLE. We’ve also covered marketing, business forms, financial statements and finding capital. Pretty impressive, right?
Their business plans are coming along. I’ve encouraged the students to go with businesses that they themselves think the community needs in an industry with which they are most familiar. All of the students have chosen to go with the retail and restaurant categories.
I can’t say that I expect every student to be the next Bobby Flay or start the next Macy’s, but I can easily argue that the skills they are learning are going to better prepare them for their future careers. Students hear “you can do anything,” and similar sentiments all the time, but with the JET Program, they’re actually applying these sometimes trite sayings. It’s been interesting watching the students grow and really understand when I tell them that the requirement is that you create a business. Everything else is up to them.
I’d really like to thank PeopleFund for putting this together.