They’re dishing out boxes of healthy, tasty snacks on one end and taking in some valuable life skills for themselves on the other.
“It’s all about giving them a new basket of skills that they wouldn’t otherwise have through just the traditional school system,” explains Steven Hansen, one of the parent-leaders involved in the youth-focused North Shore Entrepreneurs Club. “There’s just a whole other set of skills out there these days and it’s evolving very quickly.”
The NSEC was founded two years ago after a group of parents got together to offer a fun, educational and hands-on after school program for local youth with the aim of teaching them about basic business skills and entrepreneurship.
They generally meet on Monday evening, often at a member’s house in the Pemberton Heights neighbourhood, Hansen explains.
One of the group’s inaugural projects has been starting a business called My Gluten Free Bars (myglutenfreebars.ca) that offers a subscription service where customers receive a box full of tasty gluten-free bars and snacks every month.
“We’re not trying to shoot the lights out here – we’re not looking to build Amazon or anything crazy like that – but we’re looking to have simple businesses the kids can understand, they can wrap their heads around, really get passionate about, and they can learn and just have fun together as a group and take some skills on to the next stage of their life,” Hansen says.
Their club has more than 10 youth involved between the ages of seven and 15, many of whom contribute weekly to developing the My Gluten Free Bars business.
Basic aspects of finance -- revenue, margins, costs of goods sold -- along with marketing, website design and even basic packaging are all part of the set skills the NSEC wishes to impart.
Thirteen-year-olds Liam Nash and Kallum Hansen (Steven’s son) are both enthusiastic club members.
“We just though it’d be really cool to learn. It’s really just quite fun to learn how to run a business,” Kallum says.
Nash adds that he likes taking and editing photos to promote the business, and sees it as a valuable experience. “The world’s always changing with business and it’d be kind of nice to learn how to do it.”
Hansen says he has been impressed with the creativity that the youth display when it comes to business, like when they had the idea to target their health bar business to the athletically-minded, not just corporate workers.
“The kids came up with all kinds of ideas about how we might take some photos, not in an office, but in an open setting,” such as a running trail or basketball court, Hansen explains.
In today’s online-heavy modern economy, he adds, it’s never too early to start learning about business.
“It’s just another way of thinking about life in general and life goals versus just a traditional corporate job.”
