|
Summer Market Fair 2009 (see more pictures here)
Summer Program Overview
The Summer Program The program provides 60 Trenton youth with the opportunity to start and run a business individually during the summer. Middle school students participate in 14 days of training in entrepreneurship at Rider University and run their businesses throughout the summer. The intensive training program challenges students to improve their reading, writing and math skills. The experiential component involves four Summer Market Fairs at different sites in Trenton where students run their businesses. Prior to each market fair students participate in a business trip to purchase merchandise for their businesses. Also, prior to each market fair students participate in a Business Coaching Session. At each session, parents and other volunteers help students effectively plan to run their businesses at the upcoming market fair. The training ends with a business plan competition where students with the best business plans compete for prize money. The contestants work with a presentation coach to improve their presentation skills. The Summer Program Works! Research conducted on students demonstrates that the MOB Summer Program is a high quality program for Trenton’s low income youth, ages 10-13. · Research indicates that students in MOB become more interested in going to college and in starting their own businesses. · Students participating in MOB observe positive changes in self and improvement in important work/life skills (entrepreneurship, leadership, communication, and team skills). · MOB improves self-esteem among participating students using a pretest-posttest control group design. · Research on the Summer Program indicates that scores in reading, writing and math are significantly higher at the end of the training as compared to first day scores.
Summer Program students score 28% higher at the conclusion of the training on their knowledge of key entrepreneurship concepts as compared to their pre-training scores.
Research on the MOB Summer Program has been presented at national conferences and is to be published in the 2009 spring issue of the Journal of the Academy of Business Education. In 2008 the Summer Program was recognized by the prestigious National Center for Summer Learning at John Hopkins University as one of the top 20 programs in the country in terms of summer learning excellence and now in 2009 it has been recognized as one of the top 10. The MOB Summer Program received the Best Practice Award in Entrepreneurship Education at the Small Business Institute 2009 National Conference in Florida. Most recently New Jersey’s Education Commissioner Lucille Davy has endorsed the Summer Program.
Impact on Rider University Mentors Since 1997, 400 Rider University students have mentored teams of Trenton students through the process of starting and running their own businesses. Mentors’ reflections provide evidence of a powerful learning experience and of the positive impact of MOB on their own personal and vocational development. This is what Rider University students have to say about their experiences as mentors: “MOB is not like any other class offered…This class is based on a life-changing program.” “I learned that I’m capable of helping others…that I have some things in common with all of the children ...I am definitely not the same person that I was at the beginning.” “The skills that I learned at MOB I will carry with me to other aspects of my life…I learned team work and the actual meaning of mentoring.”
For research results on MOB Summer program for the year 2010 click here.
Visit http://www.rider.edu or call 609-895-5509. Return to top |
