The Lewis County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday took a moment to honor a group of students who participated in the Lewis County Business Academy in December.
The students who were honored were part of a team that scored the best in the competitive portion of the business academy program, which sees 24 student teams compete in four categories. They are tasked with creating a product, running a business simulation, giving a shareholder presentation and showing off their skills at an exposition show.
Only the students from W.F. West High School were able to attend the Tuesday morning meeting, though Centralia High School students also took part in Lewis County Business Academy, which was held at Centralia College last December.
The winning team this year took first place in two of the four competitive categories along with the overall category.
The business academy gathered junior students from both W.F. West High School in Chehalis and Centralia High School at the Centralia College campus for four days. The program takes over much of the campus and holds courses for approximately 400 students to teach them about the many aspects of running a business, from finances to marketing strategy to potential ethical dilemmas. The event was organized this year by Kiddin’ Around, a Centralia-based nonprofit.
Business Academy Chair Cameron McGee said another aspect of the program is working with new people as students from local high schools, who are so often engaged in heated rivalries, are thrown into the same classrooms and the same teams.
“For I think the only time in their careers in school, they’ll work with their rivals both, Centralia and Chehalis,” McGee said. “You put them in the same class, they’re mixed together, and by the end of the first day, you walk into that class, you’d have no idea which school they were from. They put that aside. They work together really hard, and they just absolutely killed it this year.”
In order to operate the program, Kiddin’ Around relied on 70 volunteers from the area to help run the course. Volunteers, many of whom have experience running their own businesses, work as a company adviser, guiding a team of students, or as judges, appearing as shareholders and potentially investors in student products.
Ashley Stone, the business adviser for the winning team, “ReNew Market,” spoke at the Board of Lewis County Commissioners meeting, applauding her team's performance and recognizing their focus and drive to improve their product and their business plan, ultimately leading to them being awarded first place overall.
“I was just really happy to be a part of something where I saw each of them get a chance to step into their strengths and everybody participated in some way and in a way that aligned with their strengths,” Stone said. “If you guys continue to follow that process in life, I think you will continue to be successful. So, congratulations. You guys are all amazing.”
The winning team’s product idea was a biodegradable lunar- and solar-powered charger. According to the team's student leader and CEO Eliana Alves, students were encouraged to pitch ideas that might not be possible with current technology but that would have widespread applications if realized.
In a brief opportunity she had to speak in front of the commissioners, Alves said she thinks what made her team stand out was widespread communication between all the team members and an idea for a product that anybody would find useful.
“I think it was just really cool how everybody worked together … I think that's what helped make our decisions so successful,” Alves said. “So, it's really just kind of inspiring to know that it's not always just going to be a quick and easy decision for everything, and there's always going to be a debate, but in the end, there's going to be a final decision and, in the end, it worked out for all of us.”
The four-day event in December marked the first ever Lewis County Business Academy operated by Kiddin’ Around. In the past, students from local high schools have participated in Washington Business Week, which has gone through a number of iterations and has been operated by different organizations.
Kiddin’ Around reported that, last year, they took over the program hoping to make it more specific to the needs and opportunities of the local community and more consistent year-to-year. During the Tuesday meeting, McGee included a “thank you” to the students for working with the organization as they worked through their pilot year.
“The kids that we have here today with us stepped in and tried something that nobody else has done before and killed it,” McGee said. “They worked through some of the bugs with us. They persevered, and they beat 23 other teams.”
Learn more at https://www.kiddinaround360.com/business-academy.
