Charity of choice: The Outreach Center of Lafayette (Contact-Director, Bruce Gilcrease)
75% to The Outreach Center of Lafayette – $529.80
25% to kids for group celebration – $176.60
Each Club has identified youth to help with sales, but whom have also been part of the planning process as
Granberry Unit – Lemonade Stand
10 participants
Funds raised: $356 (178 cups of lemonade)
Charity of choice: United Way of Acadiana (Contact-Stephanie Poole)
75% to United Way of Acadiana – $267.00
25% to kids for group celebration – $89.00
Kirk Taylor with Chase Bank met with both Jackie and Granberry Unit participants and spoke to them about planning and marketing the event. We discussed strategies and plans of how to make the event successful. Each week leading up to the event Directors met with participants to One of our premier programs at the Boys & Girls Club is weekly planning and brainstorming sessions focusing on leadership, finances, and the impact of small businesses on their local communities. Participants were continuously challenged create, build, market and execute the plans developed to strive to reach the goal they set for total cups if lemonade sold. In addition, the groups of participants were guided to research various local charities and their missions to determine the charity they would choose to donate most of the proceeds to.
Some participants also took part in the Career Launch program which is one of Boys & Girls Clubs of America’s job-readiness and career preparation program. It provides fun and interactive activities for youth ages 13-18 to explore a broad range of career areas, match their interest to career clusters and identify the skills and education needed for their chosen career path/ Career Launch is designed to support youth in preparing for their first job, internships, summer employment and so much more. This was a great addition to our project hence if provide an insight to participants regarding potential careers in the marketing, sales, entrepreneurship sectors. It was truly an exciting and informative opportunity and experience for our youth.
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Acadiana is launching a month-long entrepreneurship program at our two Lafayette Clubs, thanks to the 24-Hour Citizen Project. One of our premier programs at the Boys & Girls Club is “Career Launch”. This program is designed club members to learn about leadership, finances, and the impact of businesses on communities. The 24Hour Citizen Project will engage and challenge twenty-two club members to create, build, market, and execute their plans to raise money for two local non-profits.
The week of October 24-28th the Clubs will launch their business selling lemonade with a combined goal to sell 1200 cups, for a profit of $1800. Over the last few weeks, the Clubs have surveyed and selected the youth who will be part of the program. The twenty-two youth, researched, reviewed, and selected two local non-profits to donate a portion of their proceeds. The non-profits identified are United Way and Acadiana Regional Coalition on Homelessness & Housing. Each Club presented a proposal including a budget, supplies, and marketing plan, to the administrative team. The next step of the project includes identifying speakers throughout the community to talk with the kids about how to run a successful business.
The clubs have partnered with individual business owners like Kelsey Sanders, owner and operator of Eat, Fuel, Flourish LLC, Corey McCoy, owner and operator of KOK Wings, Club Blue Young Professional, and Chase Bank to help the youth to design and build their lemonade stands, create their marketing materials to promote sales, and price and purchase the supplies. The week of lemonade sales the youth will invite the community to see the finished product and of course, purchase lemonade! The youth that are part of the program will get the opportunity to present the proceeds to their chosen non-profits, giving back to the community!
We have been very busy since our last update! We were able to begin planning for our big day: August 20! Our kids are eager to get started and begin partnering with businesses to promote our lemonade stand. We will begin the entrepreneurship classes the week of June 13th during our summer program. One of the challenges we’ve run into is capacity within the club. Covid protocols restricted the number of youths we could have in the clubs. We hoped that the numbers would drop in time for us to open those restrictions a bit, but unfortunately, we have been unable to accept more youth into the club. Therefore, we have created a plan to rope in more youth serving organizations to include in the project. Within the next few weeks, we’ll meet with those organizations to get them onboard and select our team leaders. In the meantime, our club youth will begin designing our lemonade logo, creating a recipe, and identifying potential locations and organizations that could possibly receive the profits from the stand. Currently, we haven’t used any of the funds. We’ve adjusted the timeline to purchase materials during the months of May-July. That purchasing period will utilize the bulk of our budget. Stay tune for more updates! Thank you for keeping up with our journey as we connect youth and entrepreneurship to community improvement. Sincerely,
Our club kids and families are still riding the excitement of being funded! It was, without a doubt, one of the highlights of our year. Over the last few weeks, we have made progress on our project in preparation of the August 22nd event.
We’ve shared the news with our school partners for them to begin to spread the word about the project. Our club kids have begun to recruit their friends to be a part of the lemonade teams. We are in the process of selecting our team leads. Our biggest goal leading up to the end of the year was to recruit team members, so we are right on task. At the beginning of the year, we’ll begin classes with UL’S Louisiana Entrepreneurship & Economic Development Center to equip our kids with all the tools they’ll need to be successful. While we’ve made a slow start, 2022 will be full of updates, learning, community outreach, and great lemonade!
