January 2007

As many of you know I attend Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, and I am very involved with the Students In Free Enterprise team. For the 2006 - 2007 year I was the director of our Personal Success Skills category, one of our six focuses. For this category I created, organized and implemented a variety of projects that teach students the skills they will need to succeed in a competitive job market.

I taught 156 Fourth graders how to start their own friendship bracelet companies. This is always a great project. We teach them skills like teamwork and communication while they learn important aspects of starting your own business including, design, manfucturing, marketing, selling and financing.

Another big moment in my life happened in January... I kicked off my largest event thus far! The Speech Spectacular is a speech tournament hosted by the Marshall High School Speech Team and sponsored by The Schwan Food Company, a company of which I have the pleasure of working for. For this event I was asked to plan their Friday night party; it was a pirate themed party for over 750 high school students.

I accepted this offer enthusiastically and have to say, it has been the highlight of my internship. I received an abundance of positive feedback and hope to assist with the planning of next years event.

Some of the decorations that where at the party.

Kids playing on some of the games that we had brought in for them.

My slushie machines!!! These were the biggest hit! We brought in four slushie machines and served them in my custom designed glasses; we had a bar and everything, the kids really seemed to enjoy it!

Here are some of the kids. There was over 750 in attendance!