Morden Collegiate's Junior Achievement team was among 150 talented young entrepreneurs, aged 15-18, who showcased their business ideas and shared their products/services with shoppers at the St. Vital Mall in Winnipeg on Saturday.
“JA (Junior Achievement) Manitoba (JAM) offers business education programs, delivered at no cost to elementary, middle and high school students (grades 3 - 12)," outlined a news release. "More than 250 schools throughout Manitoba participate in JA each year, reaching over 16,000 students. Delivered by local volunteers, JA programs enable young people to develop essential life & financial skills through exposure to interactive activities and innovative business solutions.”
Jaxon Forster, JA President at Morden Collegiate, says their team built a company, Bullet Proof Pages, from the ground up. He described the product they created.
“We wanted to make something that could make a difference and that could really pull families together. We ended up deciding on creating a book. The idea of this book is that you would put it in your car. When you go on a road trip and if you have younger kids, instead of just giving them the iPad, instead of just turning on the TV and just letting them just get absorbed into the screens, and having the car be dead silent, it's full of ideas and activities to play while you're driving in the car, that your whole family gets engaged in, and so that you can create a lot of memories.”
Forster noted this idea came from the group's own personal experience.
““A lot of us have either younger siblings, or we've all been younger ourselves and we kind of noticed that a lot of problems that we see is that, especially being teenagers too, our parents are always saying, “Get off your phones.” It's like, well, you're sitting in a car ride and we live in the prairies, which if you don't live in the prairies, it's pretty cool for the first 20 minutes. But if you live in the prairies, there's not a lot to look at when you're driving, especially if you know the road. It's kind of boring. So, we're like, ‘What could we do?’ What could we add to make it more fun? And we're like, well, we don't really know what to do. You can almost even think of it as like a manual of things you can do in the car.”
Forster highlights some of the unique features of the book.
“At the front of our book, we have a section where you can even write down who the book belongs to. You can write down the date so that in future years, if you want to keep this book and you can look back on it and you can go, ‘Oh my goodness, what an amazing time we had!” So, it's full of crosswords, there's games, and there's ‘Did You Know?’ sections.”
The young entrepreneurs were given a bank account and three volunteer advisors to help navigate the business start-up. Forster said they learned a lot.
“And we had to create a business plan. We had to create a safety plan and we learned a lot of super-duper cool things. We learned how to use time management because you don't have all the time in the world. We did a shareholder's pitch. So, we sold some shares to some people in the community, and we learned how to set up a presentation for them, and we learned how to talk to them after the presentation, when they had questions, and it was super-duper great.”
Forster said if any student is looking to try out what it’s like to be an entrepreneur this is a great way to do it, cautioning, it does take a big-time commitment, but he added, if you are passionate about starting your business, it will give you a good idea of what it is like.
To order your own copy of “Miles of Smiles”, or to learn more, contact Forster at bulletproofpages@gmail.com. A portion of the proceeds from the books will go towards Katie Cares and the Pembina Valley Humane Society.
