The week of April 17-21 saw Aberdeen’s juniors, and some seniors, interact with one another and professionals from the business community through Rotary Business Week 2017.

This was the Aberdeen School District’s 16th year participating in the program that aims at giving students an accurate representation of the workings of the business world, which includes money management.

“It’s just exciting for the kids, those students that are coming up, they’re our future; I think a lot of the stuff they (Rotary Business Week) do with managing money is not in the schools, and from a financial standpoint we see a lot of that here at the credit union,” said Christy Vessey, a representative of program sponsor Great Northwest Federal Credit Union.

Vessey says that students also learn skills that will help them in their daily lives regardless of what profession they choose. The 218 students that participated in the event — all of Aberdeen’s juniors and those seniors who were not present in Aberdeen for their junior year — were broken into groups of 15, with each student being responsible for a portion of a group’s presentation. This leaves little to no room for slacking, an important lesson according to Vessey.

“The program covers having a job and having to show up daily for that job, which helps to prepare students for the future and for how to be responsible,” she said.

Business week is comprised of two parts that culminate on the last day of the week with a morning stockholders presentation and an afternoon trade show. The former involves students taking a pre-existing company and managing it through eight fiscal quarters; the latter sees students pitch an original product to “investors” from local businesses.

Company 10, the eventual winners of the week’s festivities, designed a product that would help people quickly, affordably and accurately measure blood pressure.

“IDM-10 (their product) will even give recommendations for what to do depending on the reading,” said Marina Urvina, a group 10 member.

Company 12 created a product that would utilize rain water by turning it into electricity through hydro-turbines within drain pipes.

“It was a great concept and everyone bought into it quickly,” Company 12 adviser Hunter Larson said.

Through the program students also learned the importance of teamwork and building relationships.

“Even though they may go to school together, they may not have known each other until Monday. It’s a team-building exercise,” Lynn Green, CTE director at the Aberdeen School District, said.

At the assembly at the end of the week, many students said that their favorite part of the week was getting to know those students who they have been in school with for years but never really knew.

“My favorite part was getting to work with new people so closely as a team,” said student Bailee Green.

Lisa Smith, company adviser for Company 10, said that while the students seemed anxious about finding out who would be in their company, in the end, the students came together and worked hard to develop a week’s worth of work they could be proud of.

“They worked hard! They agreed at the beginning of the week that they were going to win,” she said.

Part of learning responsibility is making due with what’s given, an additional lesson being taught to Aberdeen business week students. This is the second year that Aberdeen has implemented the ‘box program’ for business week, a method that saves the district money in addition to providing students with an important lesson.

“The program cost is significantly less and it has become a true ‘local’ program,” Green said in an email.

Before implementing the box program, which gives students a set amount of particular materials to use in preparing for their presentations, Washington Business Week was directly involved in virtually all aspects of the program. Recruiting volunteers, fundraising and implementing the program during the training and the weeklong event all fell to Washington Business Week.

“There is a greater cost in having their staff involved directly and after doing the program for so long, we felt ready to take this on as our own program,” Green said.

Vessey says that while she realizes it may be difficult for some to volunteer their time for a week, or even a day, it’s a worthwhile experience for those who are interested in participating next year.

“It is an amazing opportunity, I know it’s a struggle and it’s hard to get away for the week, but the benefit you get is 10-fold. Anyone who volunteers will get it back,” she said.

The winning team of Company 10 will give another presentation, this time to the Aberdeen Rotary Club,at noon Wednesday. Students will talk about what they learned, what they built and how they came together.