Do you know what Sky Blue 4Bs is? It’s a fresh new business, recently launched by middle school students at Whitney Institute as part of the in-school BizCamp programme.

Under the direction of the Youth Entrepreneurship Initiative of Bermuda (YEI) , they learned the skills and to turn mere interest in carpentry into a viable business. For that, they utilize basic business finances (costs, price, revenue, profit) and learned how to effectively market and sell their products.

This programme included more than the students: school staff also helped building bird boxes.

The business is a success! The initial production run was sold at the Agricultural Exhibition earlier this year and when the Bermuda Audubon Society heard of it, they reached out for assistance to supply the Bermuda Society of Arts with 25 boxes for their bluebird box design competition.

The students build the boxes and delivered them to City Hall in June just in time for the artist to pick them up for the competition. Boxes were painted by the artists and auctioned off to raise funds for the Bermuda Society of Arts.

Joe Mahoney, Executive Director of the YEI states: “The goal is to inspire young people to become business-savvy and economically self-sufficient. In this team-focused business approach, the students are inspired by the opportunity to turn their interest in carpentry into a revenue generating business.”

The next YEI BizCamps, usually held in conjunction with the Department of ICT Policy & Innovation, will be conducted April 2 to 6, 2018. These dates were specifically chose to coincide with the Bermuda Public School Spring Term Break.

Applications will be available after January 1 on www.bedc.bm.

BizCamps is a highly-anticipated programme, usually held in the summer by YEI. Since its inception in 2002, it has directly served over 940 students aged 13 to 19. The week-long programmes feature the award-winning curriculum from The Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship (www.nfte.com).

The YEI believe that training young entrepreneurs is a sustainable solution which responds to the needs of market changes by creating dynamic, responsive individuals who take charge and build solutions to the problems they see. The refinement of business skills leads to the growth of leadership abilities in students, teaching them to take the initiative for change in their own lives and communities. Training, technical assistance, and mentorship are, without a doubt, the most important elements to successfully empowering a young person so that they may overcome nearly any problem they encounter.

There is no fee for students who are accepted to attend BizCamps thanks to the support of sponsors including the Department of E-Commerce, The Bank of Bermuda Foundation, Partner Re, Tokio Millennium Re, The Argo Foundation and One Communication.