Chapman Partners with Girls Inc. to Offer Business Camp for Girls
Girls Inc., an organization dedicated to empowering young women, and Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business recently teamed up to develop the Youth Empowerment and Self Sufficiency (YESS) Entrepreneurship Academy.
The four-week long camp allows girls from ages eight to eleven to develop their own mock businesses. This year the campers created a town for their businesses called “Boom Chicken Soup.” The business fair for the businesses in Boom Chicken Soup was held in the Leatherby Center Launch Labs on the Chapman campus.
Prior to their official fundraiser, the girls tested their shops on members of Local Girls & Boys Clubs. At the fundraiser, which took place on July 27 and cost $100 per person, patrons explored the shops in the town the girls had created, in which the only accepted currency was an original form of money the girls created called “Mozzarella Chopstick Bucks.”
Kelli McIntosh, the Elementary Program Coordinator for Girls Inc. of Orange County said of the girls, “They are just so creative and so invested. I think that’s the cool part about this program. Apart from the educational pieces, so much of it is about girls’ decision-making and really giving them a lot of decision-making opportunities. So they have so much ownership.”
Those exploring Boom Chicken Soup found fourteen whimsical and creative businesses, with titles like Dazzle Salon, Unicorn Cafe, Passion 4 Fashion and Slime Time. The shops created by the forty-one campers offered interesting and unconventional services. The Life Changing Store sold raffle tickets for Skype sessions with pop culture icons, and Ashley’s Positive Notes offered its patrons rocks decorated with uplifting sayings.
According to McIntosh, “They think they’re coming up with ideas—which they are. But they are more subtly learning a lot of decision-making skills and being able to own their own ideas and put them into action.”
