AMHERST – In a quiet room hidden away at the Cumberland YMCA, sits almost a dozen students involved with the junior achievement company, learning to create their own business.
“This is our sixth week,” said Keeli Moses, a Mount Allison student overseeing the work done by the students. “We’re made up of high school students and Grade 8 students. They’ve formed a board with a president and all those things.”
Together, the students have come up with a product, which they will be taking to Truro for a picture competition later this week.
“It’s a custom picture book of places around the community,” said Kruz Flemming the board president. “It has different facts and poems and stuff that we will be writing.
“There isn’t really much to remember this area,” he said. “We’re not really found in anything so we thought that this would be a great way to come back and a great idea to make.”
The idea for the product first started out as a book, something that would contain memories of the community.
“We thought that that would be a good way to pitch forward,” said Flemming. “We remembered some old stuff that used to be around that isn’t available anymore where you could make your own custom ones so we’re trying to bring it back in our own way.”
The students are halfway finished creating their first proto-type for the memory book. Moses said the students had to have their first prototype by Thursday.
Once the students have finalized their product, they are looking to go out and sell it.
“We just wanted to preserve the memories of others in the book because it’ll last for a long time,” said Flemming. “We get to learn how to manage a business. I wanted to learn more about business and this is a nice fun way to do it. I was right.”
On Thursday, the company will go up against other junior achievement companies from around the province to pitch ideas to a panel of judges where they will be graded on their efficiency and their ideas. Next week, the students will be going to executive training to learn more about the different positions in the company.
jturner@amherstdaily.com
