Our schools start summer camps today! Over the past several years, we’ve been focusing a lot of our energy and resources on out-of-school-time opportunities for kids. We started slowly. Now, with the addition of a grant from the Baltimore Summer Funding Collaborative, we’re offering enrichment opportunities for almost 500 students across our three schools. Each of our schools has a core program, which features time for academics, play, and fun field trips. We’re also opening up our gyms and library in the evening so families can shoot hoops, read books, and play drama games. We’re sending kids to Camp Skylemar, in Maine. We’re sending kids to Bowdoin College, also in Maine, through a program call Bowdoin Bound. About 50 students are participating in the Middle Grades Partnership, a joint venture between Afya and The Park School of Baltimore.
Throughout the summer we’ll be promoting and posting about our programming. We hope you follow along in the fun. One program of personal interest to me is called Making, Baking, & the Art of Starting a Business. Last year at about this time my girls started a baking business, Scott’s Sweets. The girls were looking for something to do. They started a business and baked the summer away. I wrote about this in the blog in the fall. At the time, I mentioned that I wanted to expand the idea to include other girls. The bigger idea was to create a girls-run entrepreneurship camp that gave city students opportunities to learn how to make and sell things, how to start and grow a business.
The little idea, which I pedaled my way to during a bike ride, is now coming to fruition. My girls—Abigail, Kacey, and Eliza—are joining other girls—Kimberly Jones, a rising senior at Mary Baldwin University and an ABI summer intern; Madison Mohan, a Tunbridge alum and rising junior at City College; Syd Sauls, a rising freshman at Roland Park Country School—to create a camp experience for ten middle school girls from Afya and Tunbridge. This pilot program will give the middle school girls an opportunity to make and bake hand-crafted items, including cakes, soap and jewelry, under the mentorship of the older girls and their emerging small businesses. They will then learn how to market and sell their products. The girls will take several field trips around the city, traveling to R. House, B-More Kitchen, Sugar Coates Bakery, and JHU FastForward, in search of opportunities to meet entrepreneurs and learn the best practices of starting a business. The girls will be promoting their creations on social media and around the Tunbridge building, so stay tuned for opportunities to support them by purchasing their goods! We look forward to introducing some new business ideas for our incubator next summer.