School’s Junior Achievement club creates chalkboard-themed mugs
Published in the April 13-26, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Example of chalk-board coffee mug made by Live Oak High School Junior Achievement Club.
Junior Achievement is a nonprofit youth organization founded in 1919 to help educate young Americans about free enterprise. Live Oak High School’s Junior Achievement club works with local businesses and organizations to teach financial literacy, work readiness and entrepreneurship.
About four million students from grades kindergarten to high school senior participate in various Junior Achievement programs. This school year the student company at Live Oak was overseen by volunteer advisers Jeff Perkins from Heritage Bank and Armando Garcia of Dicar Networks.
We asked Isaac Muniz, Kaden Kim and Ashley Cowell, three of the Live Oak students in this year’s club, about their experience in Junior Achievement and what they learned creating their company, which produced coffee mugs that people can write chalk messages on the outside.
Describe what the Junior Achievement Club at Live Oak does and why you are members.
Junior Achievement is a worldwide organization that allows students to be successful in business. The after-school program was fortunate to be supported by the Rotary Club of Morgan Hill. In a program that supports students in learning how to start and run a prosperous business and covers the fundamentals of running a business, the students actually make a business by creating, manufacturing and selling a product. Tasks are assigned to members of the groups. It makes it realistic and comparable to what you would expect with an actual business.
(Muniz) I became a member because I wanted to learn how to run my own company. I want to make sure that if I ever own a business, I have prior knowledge to what to expect.
(Kim) I loved the idea of being able to see how a business functions. I was really interested to see what goes on behind the scenes to create a successful business. After being a part of the club for a few months, I have learned how much commitment and work it takes to create a successful business.
(Cowell) When the Junior Achievement program was presented to my history class, I immediately jumped at the chance of being able to create a business. I had been thinking of getting a degree in business and starting my own business. Apart from looking great on a resume, the program allowed me to learn about business and start to plan for my own. The Junior Achievement program was a way to experience business without the risks of running a company when you’re older.
What was your “business” project and why did you select it?
The project was initially to sell phone cases. Due to accidents that took place in the process, we decided to decorate and sell mugs with a chalkboard design. In the process of making the mugs, we had to buy mugs from IKEA, and meet up with each other to paint them. This resulted in a mug with a small chalkboard paint design on it that could be written on. Even though at first we had wanted to use a 3D printer to make phone cases, we eventually decided on the chalkboard mugs due to the fact that they had more pros than cons.
What did you learn about the activities of business by doing this chalkboard cup project?
By carrying out of this chalkboard mug project, all of the members of this club have learned that running a business isn’t only fun and games.
We learned that if we wanted our club’s business to do well, we had to be focused on our tasks and take our responsibilities seriously. We also had to deal with any obstacles or distractions that got in the way, whether it be noisy and disruptive members or lack of organization between the three of us. The idea of business is more complex than one would think and we feel as though what we have done here is realistically modeled scenarios anyone could possibly face in real life. Saying that, business can be a lot of fun if the team can work together — and, thankfully, we had a great team. Even with more than a few speed bumps on the way, we’ve made a cool product, ran a successful business, and learned a lot of useful things in the process.
What advice would you give other students about starting a business, based on your experience with the cup project?
(Kim) Based on my experience with the project, I would advise other students who are starting a business to always know what is going on. They must first know what they want to do, and what they should do to perform that. Then, I would suggest they think about what they should do if something was to fail, as this is common in most new companies, including our own.
(Muniz) I would also suggest that new students learn how to manage their time, as this club’s work does take up many hours.
(Cowell) One word — persevere. Business is a lot of hard work and there’s no way to get around that, but it is so worth it. The moment when you finally realize you’ve gone all the way, when you think to yourself “I could have stopped or given up or failed at any point in the process, but I didn’t” — there’s nothing like it. The accomplishments and skills you learn stay with you for life and can be applied to any situation in life
