Young Wrangellites will take to the sidewalks for a borough-wide annual entrepreneurial experiment Saturday.
Wrangell will celebrate Lemonade Day a week ahead of other towns, which will celebrate it on June 14, to accommodate families who might be trolling for salmon instead of pocket change that weekend. The event aims to bring first-hand experience with small business to eye-level for industrious youngsters, said borough economic development officer Carol Rushmore.
“It’s a nationwide program to build entrepreneurial business skills for kids and to teach them the basics of running a business, what it takes, money management, all that,” she said.
The program first started in Alaska four years ago, and the Southeast Conference was one of the prime motivators for the region, according to Rushmore. Locally, the schools, borough, and Chamber of Commerce help coordinate the events, which has been held in Wrangell for three years.
The program is an invaluable educational opportunity, said Wrangell schools superintendent Rich Rhodes.
“I think it’s a great idea to give kids an entrepreneurial opportunity to kind of see how to generate revenue and to work with the business community and let the community support these little business projects,” he said. “I think it’s an opportunity for kids to make a little money and understand what small business is.”
Wrangell already has a proud mercantile tradition in the form of the Wrangell Garnet Ledge, which made the program a natural fit and a community win, Rhodes said.
“Anything that we can do that has the parents working with kids in the community and working with the school and supporting things and the city and borough in a partnership relationship, the more positive things we can do, the better off we are,” he said.
For the last few years, the event has also been backed by a community development grant from First Bank. Rather than turn the grant into a handout, the grant has been redesigned to familiarize potential small business owners with the economics of startup money.
“What we did with the kids, is we said ‘Okay, you can take out a loan,’” she said. “They can take out a loan up to 50 dollars. They have to repay 50 percent of the loan and donate 10 percent of their proceeds to charity.”
In addition to startup money, the loan serves as a hands-on demonstration of the steps required to one day take out a home mortgage, for example, according to Rushmore.
Wells Fargo also provides help with the principles of setting up and succeeding at small businesses, Rushmore said.
“Basically, a lemonade stand is a small business,” she said. “The whole program is to teach them how to run this small business and teaching them how to keep track of how those expenses are, from advertising. It’s a fun way to teach these skills to the kids.”
Students could conceivably obtain the small loan for setting up their business tomorrow. However, borough officials have pushed to advertise the event in a special insert in today’s Sentinel, the deadline for which was Monday.
Extra-successful lemonade salesmen could end up spreading the word. Helen Decker’s success last year – $400 in a single day – led to a speaking opportunity in front of the Southeast Conference mid-session’s summit.
“I don’t know that they’re making a lot of money, but they’re making money and learning something too,” Rushmore said.
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