Students show budding business talent
Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Students of Al-Izhar private high school in Pondok Labu, South Jakarta, approached a business competition as the teenagers they are, and in so doing, adequately showed their grasp of the subject.
The Al-Izhar team made a list of friends who were pdkt -- slang for someone trying to woo a prospective boyfriend or girlfriend -- and offered a chocolate teddy bear holding a white heart for Rp 5,000 (55 U.S. cents), including a card and delivery service.
The next day, while the girls on the team minded the stall, the boys glided along the school corridors on a scooter to deliver the chocolates.
The team made Rp 250,000 -- a 234 percent gross profit from an initial capital of Rp 75,000 -- from sales of the bears and other chocolate products, and won against two other teams from their school.
The "Business Takes Over Your Class" competition was organized by Prasetya Mulya Business School, which has arranged such competitions at 13 private and state senior high schools across the capital since May.
"It's interesting how they promoted their goods," said project director Agus Soehadi.
The two-day competition included a short workshop on business and a crash-course on the items that participants were to sell. The following day, students visited local markets to buy raw materials, produce the goods and sell them.
On Thursday, Prasetya Mulya invited six of these schools -- private high schools Al-Izhar, Global Islamic School, SMAK 5 BPK Penabur, Seruni Don Bosco, and state high schools (SMAN) 34 and 8 -- to compete against each other to sell Italian food at the Prasetya campus in Cilandak, South Jakarta.
"We want to show them that business is not complicated and that it wasn't only the unemployed who became entrepreneurs," said Soehadi. "We hope that, as they become more familiar with business, they will become interested in starting one."
The students had two hours to cook and decorate their stalls. They made a variety of pasta delights, from lasagna, macaroni, to the all-time favorite, spaghetti, as well as other dishes like bruschetta and cream soups.
The SMAN 8 team put up soccer posters and paper Italian flags -- as the country "is famous for its soccer clubs" -- and wore red paper headbands supporting menus.
SMAK 5 BPK Penabur, whose planned balloons floated away, were left with fake spaghetti in styrofoam boxes as their decoration -- but won anyway, with a profit of 330 percent from a Rp 75,000 capital, and was awarded a Rp 2 million cash prize.
Second and third places were taken respectively by Al-Izhar and Don Bosco, which received Rp 1.5 million and Rp 1 million in cash prizes.
Meanwhile, SMAN 8 was voted the favorite team.
"They scored the highest in team work and creativity, but had the lowest profit," said Soehadi.
So, how do the students view business now?
Bunga, a student at SMAN 8, said business was complicated. "The most difficult is to be unique," said the 15-year-old.
Her schoolmate, Sutajaya, said, "I'm interested, but my father holds an economics degree and has told me not to get one."
Mawar, an Al-Izhar student, shed a little more light on the matter: "I'm interested. But it's hot, it's tiring..."