Students Launch Booming Business at Bacon Academy

There are board meetings happening inside Bacon Academy in Colchester and the participants are student.

Jordan Brown is vice president of finance and senior Natalia Svirshchevsky is president of the Bacon Bottle Company.

"I've been doing the books and inventory to factor in the stockholders return and figure out our cash balance and liabilities and capital," said senior, Jordan Brown.

"I hear constant questioning: it's real? Real money? Real checking account? Real business?" said business teacher, Louise Wessling.

Yes, everything about this business, run by high school students, is real.

The students behind the business are participants in the junior achievement company program. This is the seventh business at Bacon Academy.

"When we were doing our course selections, it talked about running a business and I also liked the fact that there were no textbooks involved," said Svirshchevsky.

This program is all hands on. The students developed a product and a commercial to market their merchandise.

"I loved it. It was really cool to work with all the different parts of the business because we have a marketing section, HR, finance so we all had to meet separately and all together," said Svirshchevsky.

There were even shareholders who received a $10.05 return on their initial $2 investment.

"It's a rush. It's a the biggest rush just to see what you put in your time and effort in fall through and just to see everything work out," said Brown.

Perhaps most important, this program gives students a better sense of what they want to pursue professionally.

"Often students come into this program not knowing what they want to do and this gives them a direction, a foundation from where to go," said Wessling.

Both Natalia and Jordan now say business is in their future. 

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