Dear Friends,
It's hard to motivate kids to work hard toward all these goals we've created for them. We might be more successful if the goals were their own...
We were recently directed to a video called "Will Smith's Wisdom." The video is really clip after clip of him sharing his philosophy and incredible work ethic. "Just DECiDE what you want- and MAKE IT HAPPEN. It takes focus and hard work..." It's everything we want our children to hear... everything we need tomorrow's leaders to believe.
You just have to watch it. Click here to watch the video. Feel free to use those 6 degrees of separation to tell Will Smith all about TREP$- because we think he would love what your kids are doing!
Thanks so much for all you do, Pamela and Hayley email us
|
|
Straight from NJ.COM
Middle School Students Getting an Early Start in Business
Thursday, February 24, 2011
BY MICHAEL O'LEARY
Verona-Cedar Grove Times
STAFF WRITER
There was a time when middle school students relied on their parents for financial support, often in the form of few dollars of weekly allowance, but a new program in Cedar Grove is letting students as young as fifth grade turn original business ideas into real money.
More than 100 Memorial Middle School students of all ages are participating in the series of TREP$ workshops, which aim to teach the children about entrepreneurship and what its like to establish and operate one's own business.
Students in TREP$ - which derives from the word "entrepreneurs" - are expected to create their own product or service that they will try to sell for actual dollars. The program will culminate in a marketplace on Friday, March 4 where the young businesspeople will either walk away a bit richer or learn some harsh lessons about trying to making it on your own.
According to the TREP$ website, the program was created by New Jersey teachers Hayley Romano and Pamela deWaal and has spread to a number of local schools. Parent Amy Brancato, who is a teacher in Bloomingdale, has taken the lead in establishing the program in Cedar Grove, which she first saw in action in the district she teaches.
The Cedar Grove Chamber of Commerce is actively involved with the program and at the Feb. 3 meeting, a number of volunteers from local businesses provided feedback to students on their pitches.
Students in grades five through eight packed four classrooms and the media center during the workshop earlier this month for the chance to exchange business ideas with actual business people at the workshop.
Joe Iraci, of Iraci Associates Insurance, and Bill Brancato, of AGL Welding Supply Compan were so impressed with the ideas of fifth graders Joseph Kang, Shane Benson, Francesca Carchia, Alissa Psaryanos and Grace Brolly, that they said they were going to start taking tips from the students.In addition to formulating their own products and services, the students in TREP$ are learning lessons about business and picking up the proper vocabulary by doing homework assignments dubbed "bizwork."
Joe Lipman, owner of Cedar Grove Travel and a chamber of commerce trustee, said he started out in business at a young age by cutting lawns and was excited by the opportunity to help entrepreneurial students make money from their own ideas.
"We saw TREP$ as a great opportunity to have our son participate in an enrichment program. We believe in being in your own business. It's part of the culture of our household," said Jolie Ruffalo, a parent and, along with her husband Dr. Robert Ruffalo, owner of A T.E.A.M Approach Physical Therapy Center.
|
Letter from a new TREP$ school

Dear TREP$,
This past February we held our first Marketplace at Reverend Brown School in Sparta, N.J.. It was a huge success! The children enjoyed experiencing life as a small business owner. The skills they have acquired during their 6 after school workshops were very motivating and so much fun. They were fully prepared to launch their own business. The shoppers were very impressed with all the creative, innovative products.
Everything went so smoothly, the lay out of all the materials made it so easy to run the entire program. Each committee person was able to enjoy the full shopping experience at the marketpace. I'm sure our Marketplace will continue to grow each year and even though the number of entrepreneurs will increase I can see how the program begins to run itself.
We thank TREP$ for providing such a wonderfully laid out program, inspiring and truly empowering our kids through Entrepreneurship.
Sincerely,
Grace Faust
Publicity coordinator
Connie Zoetjes
Marketplace coordinator
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Meet Tommy, Maker of Fine Bookmarks
 My name is Tommy and I am an 11 year old from White Rock School. At first, I wasn't sure what to do for a business. I knew my aunt made bookmarks and thought that would be a great idea. I called my aunt and started the ball rolling. It was PERFECT! I gathered my supplies and got to work. After a couple of days with the work progressing, my Mom found a vendor show and signed me up. On the day of the vendor show, I sold for four hours and in the end, made over $50 in sales. My business took off from there. I went to another craft show the next month, and I made over $70. Even though I made money at both shows, my favorite part of the whole business was participating in the TREP$ Marketplace. I made a profit of over $150! A lot of people came up to me and said "These are so nice" or "I love these." It felt great to know that at least one person liked my bookmarks. Some people asked me how I made them, but to tell them the whole process was like pulling teeth from me. I had to keep my trade secret. My business wasn't too hard, the challenge was to find the right setups for my bookmarks. There were so many different combinations of parts that it was a brain boggler to think of what to put together that would sell. I also had to think of what season it was to form my "holiday" types of bookmarks. This was my favorite business experience ever and I do plan to continue the business. My parents keep getting more impressed at the progress that I make with every show that I participate in and I can't wait for more shows to go to. Since I finished the TREP$ classes, it's going to be easy to do my next show with everything I learned. It's going to be awesome!!!! |
|
Meet Trevor, Creator of Brick Builders Game

My name is Trevor and I am 10 years old and go to White Rock School, where for the first time, my school offered TREP$.
Since I like Legos, I thought it would be fun to create a game using Lego bricks. Most Lego games being sold now are expensive. My idea was to sell a game that was cheaper. My dad helped me set up the game board on Microsoft Word and I had each sheet laminated at Staples. On E-Bay, I was able to buy a large amount of Lego pieces at a reduced price. I then bought dice and game chips at a Dollar store.
I built a sample and tested with my family.
At the marketplace, I told kids how to play the game and let them try it out. At first, not many people were buying the game. I then lowered the price. People came up to me and really liked the idea. I felt really excited. By the end of the night, I sold all 15 games! The lesson that I learned was to lower your price and people will come and buy. I hope that kids will have fun playing the game and I am thinking of new ideas for my business, Building Blocks-R-Us.
Thanks for your interest!
|
Meet Dylan and Patrick, owners of "Cocho Cards"
 My name is Dylan, and me and my friend, Patrick are the co-founders of Cocho Cards. We are both fifth-graders at Ryerson Elementary School in Wayne NJ, and we have been good friends since kindergarten. When we started going to TREP$, we decided to go into business together and we already knew what that business would be. That's because back in third grade, we created our own trading cards. We were bored with Pokemon and other kinds of card games, so we started drawing our own characters on small memo pads and collecting them in plastic bags. We drew tons of them and we named them Cocho, and then we made up rules for playing card battles. For TREP$, we wanted to call our company Cocho, and we wanted our products to be the trading card packs, coloring books and action figures. That ended up being too many products for us to make. The coloring books would take too much time to draw and put together, and the figures would be too expensive and hard to make. We also realized that drawings on memo paper would not make very fun trading cards and kids wouldn't buy them. I really like drawing on the computer with a program called Paint, and I already made a pretend Cocho video game for fun. So my Mom thought I should keep going and make as many Cocho characters as I could on the computer. She said she would buy card paper and help me print them. Patrick and I picked all of our favorite characters from our collection, and I ended up drawing 48 different Cocho cards on the computer. The best part for me was drawing the cards on Paint. My Mom printed them and helped me cut them into trading card size. They came out very colorful, so I thought that kids would want to buy them now. We also bought little plastic bags to package each pack of seven cards. Patrick made instructions for how to play the card game and we printed a sheet for each pack. We did some other things to help sell our card packs. My Mom baked sugar cookies and we decorated them with the Cocho logo, then we offered a free cookie with every card pack purchase. Patrick made shirts with the Cocho name on them and I made employee name tags. We also made a poster with sample cards, and I put my computer drawings on my laptop to get people's attention at the marketplace. We were very happy to sell most of our card packs at the marketplace, and the principal of our school and the mayor of our town complimented us on how creative our business was. Our friends were also impressed to see these cards, since they have heard about them since third grade. We made $50 profit, which we split. We were even happy to have a few leftover packs so we could play with them! Since both my Mom and Dad are entrepreneurs with their own businesses, I hope I can do the same someday. TREP$ helped me realize everything that goes into running a business, and it was a lot of fun.
|
Meet Patrick, owner of "Cocoa Craze"

My name is Patrick and I am 12 years old from Schuyler-Colfax Middle School. The name of my business is Cocoa Craze and I sell different flavors of homemade hot cocoa mixes. I have always made hot cocoa for my friends and family and it always brought a smile to their faces. I got the notice about the TREPS workshop at my school and I thought it would be a neat idea to sell my hot cocoa mixes.
I thought that it would be a cool idea to sell other different flavors of hot cocoa. I began experimenting with many different flavors using the spices from my kitchen cabinet. My friends and family were my taste testers. After many weekends of taste testing, I came up with three flavors and plain cocoa flavor being my fourth flavor. I started to think about the names of my flavors and the name of my company. I thought of the name Cocoa Craze for my business and the names of my cocoa mixes were Peppermint Twist, Pumpkin Pie Spice, Cinnamon Delight and Creamery Cocoa.
Once I perfected the flavors of the mixes, I started to think of ways to package my mixes. I found clear small bags with twist ties and they were the right size to fit the mix. My dad helped me create the business cards and direction cards on the computer. I used ribbon to attach the cards to the packaged mixes to make it both useful and appealing to the customers. The packaging of the cocoa was a real challenge because of all the measuring that was done but it was also fun. After the packages were made, I decided to charge $1.50 each. Each of these packages made two cups of cocoa.
I decided to offer free samples to the customers at the TREPS Marketplace. I used four thermoses; one filled with each flavor and used Dixie cups for sampling. The customers loved the taste of my hot cocoa and wanted to buy them. The customers had a really hard time choosing which flavor to buy so they bought more than one. I think the samples really helped sell my hot cocoa.
I was really nervous that people would not like my product and walk away. I was really happy that I almost sold out of all of my hot cocoa mixes. I sold 101 packages out of the 120 packages that I made, which added up to $151.50. After subtracting my expenses, I made a profit of $90.90. I had a great time at TREPS and I hope to do it again next year.
|
|
|
|
|
Teen Sells Candles with Macho Scents
MARYSVILLE, Ohio, March 15 (UPI) -- A 13-year-old Ohio boy said his business, Man Cans, has sold about 500 candles geared toward men, with scents such as gear head and fresh mitt.
Hart Main of Marysville, who founded the business in November, said he has so far sold 500 of the products on the Internet and in local stores, WCMH-TV, Columbus, Ohio, reported Tuesday.
"My sister was selling candles for school and I was making fun of her because they were really girlie scents and the idea came to me that there weren't any man-scented candles," Main said.
|

Have you connected with us on FACEBOOK yet? Please click the link and join our group!! We'd really appreciate it. We are keeping it updated with the Winter/Spring Marketplace dates as they come in- so check it out!
If you are already a part of our TREP$ family of schools, you know you can count on us. We are also counting on you- to spread the word and tell people at other schools about your experiences with the program. |
What great ideas
do you have to share?
We're adding a new section to our newsletter!
We know that you have things that you are doing at your school to make TREP$ even better!
Help out your fellow TREP$ Schools by sending in what works at your school.
Click here to email us your great idea!
|
Welcome to the
TREP$ Family of Schools!

Lakeside Middle School,
Pompton Lakes, NJ
Macopin Middle School,
West Milford, NJ
|
We would like to thank the following organizations for their ongoing support:


|
Upcoming Marketplaces
Come see the crowd,
hear the buzz,
listen to the sales-pitches,
and feel the ENERGY!
Thursday, March 24, 2011 6:30-8:30 Butler Middle School, Butler, NJ
Wednesday, April 13, 2011 6:30-8:30 Stillwater School, Stillwater, NJ
Thursday, April 14, 2011 6:30-8:30 Lounsberry Hollow School, Vernon, NJ
Friday, April 15, 2011, 6:30-8:30 Walter T Bergen School, Bloomingdale, NJ
Saturday, April 30, 2011 4:00-6:00 Cedar Hill School, Towaco, NJ
Saturday, April 30, 2011 4:00-6:00 Golden Hill School, Florida, NY
Be sure to send us your Marketplace submission so that we can include it on our calendar! |
New to TREP$?
With the mission of empowering each child with an entrepreneurial mindset, TREP$ is working to improve the futures of today's youth.TREP$ (short for enTREPreneurS), is an after-school program in which children in grades 4-8 are taught everything they need to know to start their own businesses in about 6 weeks. The program ends with a large scale flea-market style event called The TREP$ Marketplace, giving the new entrepreneurs the opportunity to launch their businesses, selling real products to real customers for real money! Talk about a motivating experience. Winner of NJPTA'S Champion for Children Award, TREP$ is helping many schools around the world teach important skills while engaging and motivating the children. The program has been featured on NJN's Classroom Close-Up as well as ASCD's Education Update.Link to TREP$ WebsiteLink to Classroom Close-UpLink to Education Update
|
Rev. Brown TREP$ in the News!
Alexis Thomas, a 6th grader from Newton and Ruby Esposito, a 6th grader from Byram showing off their homemade candles
These Little Kids Went to Market
Sparta Independent News March 2, 2011
...And wowed shoppers with their entrepreneurial skills
SPARTA On Friday, February 25th, Reverend Brown School held their first TREP$ Marketplace, a unique flea-market style event where all the vendors are children in grades 6 through 8.
Click here to read more.
|
TREP$ Schools
Lakeside Middle School Pompton Lakes, NJ Macopin MiddleSchool West Milford, NJ Memorial Middle School Cedar Grove, NJ Maugham Elementary Tenafly, NJ Smith Elementary Tenafly, NJ Stillman Elementary Tenafly, NJ Ryerson School Wayne, NJ Our Lady of Consolation Wayne, NJ Youth Express St Paul, MN Cedar Hill School Towaco, NJ Califon School Califon, NJ Oxford Central School Oxford, NJ Schuyler Colfax School Wayne, NJ Frankford Twp School Frankford, NJ Sussex Avenue School Morristown, NJ Clarke County School District Atlanta, GA Golden Hill Elementary Florida, NY Jawahir Al Riyadh Int'l School Riyadh, SA Future Window Int'l School Riyadh, SA Al Ghad School Riyadh, SA Wilson School Mountain Lakes, NJ Edgemont School Montclair, NJ Ridgewood Ave School Glen Ridge, NJ Richard Butler Middle School Butler NJ West Hall Middle School Oakwood, GA Gilmour Academy Lower School Gates Mills, OH Kingdom School Riyadh, SA Najd School Riyadh, SA King Khaled Int'l School, Riyadh, SA The Star School, Flagstaff, Arizona Lecole Soleil Levant, New Brunswick, Canada Mackay Elementary, Tenafly, NJ Tumeh Family Home School Bluff, UT Cooperstown MS, Cooperstown, NY JFK Elementary, Wayne, NJ Lounsberry Hollow, Vernon, NJ UGL School, Hewitt, NJ Al Yasmin Int'l, Riyadh, SA Yara Int'l School, Riyadh, SA Cobb Cnty District, Cobb Cty, GA New MiddleEast Int'l, Riyadh, SA Fredon School, Fredon, NJ Reverend Brown, Sparta, NJ White Rock School, Jefferson, NJ Lafayette School, Lafayette, NJ Stillwater School, Stillwater, NJ Marshall Hill, West Milford, NJ Green Hills School, Green, NJ Maple Road School, West Milford, NJ Westbrook School, West Milford, NJ Haledon School, Haledon, NJ Birchwood School, West Nyack, NY Euclid School, Hasbrouck Hts, NJ Holy Spirit, Pequannock, NJ McKeown School, Hampton, NJ Walter T Bergen MS, Bloomingdale, NJ Paradise Knoll, Oak Ridge, NJ
|
|