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The Financial Empowerment and Youth Development Programs' Lemonade Stand Project

As a non-profit organization, IBA has a variety of programs that address various challenges within the community. At times—more so now than in previous years—these programs will coordinate to assess challenges that may impact more than one of them. This allows them to combine efforts and come up with ideas or projects to address these challenges together.

This is how the Financial Empowerment Program and the Youth Development Program got together and started an ongoing plan of Financial Empowerment for Youth. With this initiative in mind, a project called “The Lemonade Stand” was put in place where participants had to develop a business plan and start a lemonade stand business. They did this using all of the financial management knowledge acquired throughout the year.

Because financial empowerment is so important, getting youth to talk about it and understand the language was part of the plan; laying the groundwork for entrepreneurship was another.

After being divided into groups, the participants were asked to work on two very basic tasks: to come up with a name for their lemonade stand and a price for the product they would be selling. The more the project developed, the more they all understood how important those two tasks were.

As the business idea progressed, they had to come up with a logo and a role for each member of the group within the business, and they had to understand business logistics, net profit, and net loss. It was much more than just an idea with a name and random price.

The participants learned a lot through this project. It was also clear that these young adults were very interested in the subject, eager to learn about finances and how to manage them correctly.

Still, the big surprise—not necessarily unexpected, but neither was it the focus of this initiative—was the use of problem-solving skills. It was very satisfying to see youth benefit so much from an entrepreneurial workshop.

Not only do the young participants get paid for being part of the Youth Development Program, but, thanks to the collaboration of the Financial Empowerment Program, they also learn how to manage that money wisely. The benefits are all interconnected. This is an initiative that these programs are definitely looking forward to maintaining and improving.

Your support for these programs is what keeps them going. Helping IBA with your donations is how we, together as a community, can improve lives and empower others to succeed.

If you wish to donate to IBA’s Programs, please click here or for more information about these programs, contact their directors at sandra@ibaboston.org for Youth Development or leesandra@ibaboston.org for Financial Empowerment.

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