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| TampaBays 10 News |
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| FatBrain In the Lakeland Ledger |
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| FatBrain in Polk County Democrat |
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| FatBrain in Polk Voice |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Local Home School Students Learn Business Basics while Helping Self and Others
Lakeland, Florida, May 19, 2008 – As part of a home school project to learn business basics, a group of local 8-11 year olds have started their own coffee business. Now the children are experiencing the joys of helping others and themselves.
What started as a home school co-op educational experience, turned into a full-fledged viable small business, which is touching lives around the globe. The goal of the co-op was to introduce students to business basics, but when a coffee roaster from Georgia signed up to help, a coffee sales business was born.
Since starting in September last year, the children have learned how to give a sales presentation, design a label for their coffee, track and manage customers, complete monthly income statements, provide customer relations, and learned how to be socially responsible by giving a percentage of their profit to charity.
“It was important for the children to learn that making money is not a self-serving endeavor. Having coffee to sell was dependent on farmers in Colombia and having people to sell to was dependent on customers believing in their business.”
“The children are taught to choose a charity to support,” said mom Nicole Hunt who has written a children’s business curriculum called FatBrain Coffee. “Our coffee roaster leads by example supporting, Coffee Kids, an organization that help families in coffee-producing regions around the world improve their quality of life (www.coffeekids.org).” The children donate anywhere between 10% - 30% of their profits to a charity of their choice.
In six months, eight year old Scout, who wanted to start her own business to take gymnastic lessons, not only pays $50 a month for lessons, but has put $142.44 in savings and has donated $65.51 to an orphanage in Zimbabwe. Sisters, Katherine, age 10, and Rachel, age 8, sell about 30 bags of coffee each month. This helps them to pay for horse feed, riding lessons, as well as, gymnastics lessons. In addition, in the six month they have run their business they have given $150 to a missionary, $150 for college savings, and $200 for personal savings.
Not many elementary school students learn business skills and even fewer actually endeavor on a year-long sales business in order to pay for their own hobbies or send a missionary or charity monthly contributions?
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