Students from 17 different schools in the Prince Albert region and northern Saskatchewan entered the Entrepreneurship is a Choice event, which will conclude on Thursday.
“We dealt with the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division and the Northern Lights School Division is sending a number of students for tomorrow,” said Verona Thibault, executive director of Saskatchewan Economic Development Association (SEDA).
Overall, 236 students will have participated in a series of activities, including an experiential learning event where students have to set up and run their own lemonade stands.
“There have been so many wonderful things, but today these were a really neat group of young people,” said Vickie Newmeyer, president of Eventful Productions and creator of the Lemonade Marketing Game.
“Everybody was really engaged. They really were committed to get there and get it done,” she continued. “They don’t even know maybe their names right now, but they worked together and built a team … What I love about the game is it’s team building, it’s consensus building, it’s public speaking, it’s cross-cultural boundaries taken down.”
Each team was composed of 10 members. Different roles were assigned to all teammates. The goal was to impress a panel of judges who would taste all of the lemonade made and select a winning team to allot $1,000 to.
While the selection criteria were based around taste, they also involved the appearance of the product and the strength of the commercial made by each team.
During the game, students purchase everything from ingredients to banners and glasses by using $100 of play money.
Carlton student Brandon Vallee served as the CEO for the winning stand, “Tropical Getaway.” He said the team had to figure out how to price and advertise its product.
“We just went and asked the judges what they thought about it and what they didn’t like about it,” Vallee said, when asked what adjustments his team had to make to its product. “We just had to water it down a bit.”
As well, Vallee and his teammates opted to advertise with a lot of bright colours.
“They come into this room 10 different people at a table,” Newmeyer said. “We need to get them to be a cohesive team. That’s No. 1 … They came up with that sort of innovation -- who’s the best at this and recognized those skill sets and let them go to town … If the team can gel together, they usually come out on top.”
Following the lemonade game, the students went up to the auditorium to attend a motivational talk by entrepreneur Troy Payne.
alex.dipietro@paherald.sk.ca
