Tuesday, Jul. 28, 2009

Military kids learn lessons about commerce

About 20 teens gathered in a classroom at Fort Jackson, learning such business lingo as overhead, costs and unit price.

“Remember,” said class instructor Paul Smith, “the selling price should always exceed the total cost of goods sold. Otherwise, you’re losing money.”

And so it went last week at Camp Eagle ‘09, a four-day program aimed at showing 11- to 17-year-olds how to realize their dreams of being an entrepreneur.

But the camp wasn’t a public-school business class or Junior Achievement event. Instead, it was a program of Operation: Military Kids, aimed at providing activities for children whose parents are in the active-duty Army, National Guard and Reserve.

Sponsored by the Defense Department and coordinated by the Clemson University Extension Service’s 4-H program, the operation is new this summer in South Carolina. Nationally, all but one state - New Mexico - have adopted the program, which the Army launched in April 2005.

The reason it needed such a program for children is because some 40 percent of the soldiers deployed overseas in places like Iraq and Afghanistan are parents, the Army said.

Most activities are focused on helping military children cope when a parent is deployed by providing fellowship and a shoulder to lean on, said Woody Nesbitt, a retired Army major and state coordinator.

Other programs, like the business camp at Fort Jackson, are educational and teach children such things as leadership and team building, he added.

Activities are held on military bases as well as in the state’s cities and towns where National Guard soldiers and Army reservists live.

The program fills a void for children who don’t live on military bases where there are dozens of activities sponsored by the local Family & Morale, Welfare and Recreation Command, said Lt. Col. Clarence Bowser, family programs director for the S.C. National Guard.

“For a lot of these kids, trouble is right next door,” said Bowser, an Afghanistan veteran. “When you send one parent off (to combat) and the other works, there are activities that children need to be involved in that are productive.”

Having a parent gone for a year serving in a combat zone is “frustrating,” said 13-year-old Ashlee Williams, of Clarksville, Tenn., who is visiting her aunt in Columbia this summer.

Ashlee, who wants to go into business as a party planner, said her father is in the Army and stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky. He has deployed twice to Iraq, she said.

“It can be very frustrating,” Ashlee, who has two younger siblings, said of the times her father has been gone. “Because you have only one parent with you.”

For some of the teens, the business camp at Fort Jackson helped them focus on what they want to do when they grow up.

Fourteen-year-old Myreon Broomfield, a rising 9th-grader at Lower Richland High School, dreams of playing pro baseball. But he also realizes he needs a backup plan.

In the camp exercise, Myreon, whose parents are retired soldiers, tapped his own work experience to put together a plan for a car wash and detailing service.

“It’s turning out to be a really great experience,” Myreon said of the business camp.

Paris Davis, 13, who will be in the eighth grade this fall at Dent Middle School, wants to help her mother, a soldier stationed at Fort Jackson, start a business.

“My mom, when she gets out (of the Army), she’s planning to have a photography business,” Paris said. But Paris said her ultimate career goal is to go to college and become a medical doctor.

The summer camps usually are no more than four days. Activities include sessions in which children can do arts and crafts, learn how to recycle, and talk about the experience of having a parent deployed.

The toughest challenge for the Guard, Bowser said, is “just getting the word out.”

At the business camp, the teens had to come up with a business idea, research the competition, put together a plan and make a pitch to a panel of adults.

Smith wanted them to come up with a business that would tap their work experience like mowing lawns, running a baby-sitting service, or operating a bakery.

The teen years are prime for teaching business basics, Smith said. That’s because teens are interested in having money and spending it, he said.

And owning a business is one way to show teens how to put cash into their pockets, he said.

Smith, a teacher at North Central Middle School in Camden and adjunct professor at Newberry College, encouraged the teens to be persistent, creative and not worry about failure.

“If you cannot make mistakes, you can’t make anything,” he said.

Reach Crumbo at (803) 771-8503.

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