Adinvita Private School has set its third annual Young Entrepreneur Day for 5:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at MKA Special Occasions, 500 S. Grant Ave.
The event showcases products created by prekindergarten through eighth grade students.
Vasty Urias is in her third year of taking part in the event. Her idea is a selfie booth like the one she and her parents saw when they visited Miami last summer.
“We were walking by the streets and there was a sign that said Selfie Museum, and my mom was like, oh, I’ve heard about these. Why don’t we go in? So we went inside and basically they all have these booths. They have different backgrounds where you can take pictures and stuff. It was a very cool experience,” said Urias, a 13-year-old eighth-grader.
Urias realized Odessa didn’t have a Selfie Museum, so she created one.
“We took four foam insulation walls; we put them together with door hinges, and then we painted them and put backgrounds on them so every person can take them in all four booths for $10. And they can take it with their own (phones). … Models can create their portfolios. People could take their profile pictures for Instagram, or if they’re an influencer, just to take pictures and post them so it could all be in one section. You can also take it to parties, to social events, to schools, because it is portable, since it has the door hinges. You close them; you can put them in your truck and then you can drive off and put them where you would like,” Urias said.
Many people like to take photos to capture the moment and save that moment forever.
“I want them to have it with a fun background. … For example, I have four backgrounds. One of them has an Instagram frame as a prop so they can hold it up and they can smile … Then I have another one which is a black background with neon frames on them, which I’m planning to put in a corner so that the frames don’t really come out as bright. I have a money wall which are just lines of $100 bills. And then we have little props around like they have sunglasses and stuff like that. And then we have an ice cream room which has a ice cream neon light with a pink background and sprinkles on it that says ‘I scream for selfie,’” Urias said.
She added that she loves Young Entrepreneur Day.
“They’re really fun. I think it’s a way that we can express ourselves and really get the feel of what it’s like of selling products and what it’s like talking to judges, what it’s like being an entrepreneur and getting out in the world and selling things. So I definitely think it’s a very fun idea,” Urias said.
Brothers Maverick and Jackson Kilgore created a shop where you can get keychains, magnets and coasters. Maverick, 7, is in kindergarten and Jackson, 5, is in prekindergarten.
Maverick said he and his brother had fun working on the project. His dad taught him how to make the items and then did it himself.
He added that he’s “excited” about Young Entrepreneur Day.
Londyn Cuevas, a 9-year-old third-grader, and Zoe Soto, an 8-year-old third-grader, explained their projects.
Cuevas made bath bombs, and Soto, snow cones.
The bath bombs come in watermelon, grape, coconut and pineapple. Deciding on bath bombs was easy for Cuevas as she loves the way they smell and make the water fizz and change color.
She’d make the bombs and then let them sit for a week. Cuevas said she learned to make them from a video.
Soto said she was going to offer Slushies at first, but that didn’t work out so they settled on snow cones instead. They will come in 12 different flavors and she will sell popcorn and pickles.
Cuevas said she likes Young Entrepreneur Day because “you make a lot of money.”
School founder Linda Subia said the students have to fill out paperwork with the design thinking process questions.
Subia said the students will have to write down how much money they spent and how much profit they’re going to make.
“They have to turn all that in and then they have to make their presentation board and then they have to be able to speak to the community about it and describe how they made it; how they created it and what were the flaws. Like Zoe mentioned, they wanted to do Slushies, but it didn’t turn out good, so she had to change it to snow cones. She was problem solving,” Subia said.
There were also flaws with the bath bombs, Subia said.
There are about 35 students involved in Young Entrepreneur Day and siblings have combined their projects.
“I think every year it gets better and better,” Subia said of the projects and the event. “It’s nice to see the kids get excited about it. The upper grades have been working on theirs for a couple of months and they really want to get out there and make money. They really have good ideas. I’m really surprised with what kids come up with,” Subia said.
Amanda Tijerina, co-founder of Adinvita, said a lot of the students created websites and commercials, made with artificial intelligence, to go with their projects.
Subia said the parents get very involved with the projects. One of the school’s objectives is to get parents working side by side with their children, having fun and creating something they can sell together.
“Our vision for the school was to teach our kids how to be leaders and to get out and meet people, socialize with the community and to give them the skills that they need because of course the skills are in the state TEKS for financial literacy, but we wanted to give them that hands-on collaboration with community and the knowledge of research, design thinking and just creating products and being innovative … We talked to them before they started their projects. We talked about Steve Jobs how he invented the first iPhone. Everybody wanted it, they didn’t even know what he was going to present under the red cloth, but people still went and they wanted to know what he was presenting to them. Everybody wanted the iPhone. … The iPhone is still the best,” Subia said.
