According to Inc. the rate of female entrepreneurs has increased by 114% over the past two decades. In celebration of Women’s History Month, we are highlighting our Young Entrepreneurs Academy Family Kits. This is the first time CommUniverCity has curated any kind of take-home kits like this. These kits aimed to engage 3rd-8th grade students as they learn from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kits were distributed specifically to families of low-income to boost their chances of wealth creation in the future.
Students received a workbook of exercises that covered business topics such as entrepreneurship, budgeting, ideation, advertising, and marketing. The kit included 4 activities for students and their families to venture through.
The first activity was to watch a video titled “What is an Entrepreneur” and a video created by an SJSU student to introduce the concept of entrepreneurship to a younger audience. Following the video would be a quiz.
In the second activity, students generated business ideas by identifying three problems in their lives. As a result, they would think of innovative solutions and ideas to solve their problems. Several students followed through by creating their own business plans to get their ideas off the ground!
The third activity consisted of a family Budget board game which teaches players how to establish a realistic budget and manage their money based on real-life situations.
The final activity gave student supplies to create their own advertisement or business card for one of their business ideas. Many of the students were over excited and went ahead to create both!
Families that submitted photos and journals received a $75 gift card. All in all, we were able to distribute 29 kits to families, with 21 of them that submitted their completion and received gift cards. As a result, a total of 49 business ideas were generated from the kits. The students came up with creative ideas such as developing new game apps, apps for health and food, creating a clothing line for dogs, and starting a drive-thru Indian food establishment.
To highlight Women’s History Month once more, all 29 parents of participants were women, 14 of whom filed taxes as the Head of Household.