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BizWorld Academy Empowers 5th Graders with Entrepreneurship Education (Part 1 of 3) By Troy French Senior Vice President Corporate Foreign Exchange, Wells Fargo Board Member, BizWorld.org Last week, I had the pleasure of being a guest speaker at BizWorld Academy, a wonderful opportunity that pairs a corporation with a local school. The academy introduced BizWorld.org‘s entrepreneurship programs to a group of bright 5th graders from Ford Elementary School located in Richmond, CA. The academy was held at Wells Fargo in San Francisco, CA. The students asked me a series of questions about my role and what I do at Wells Fargo. They formed their own friendship bracelet companies while learning real-world skills such as leadership, teamwork, and financial management. These students were in the presence of other Wells Fargo employees that taught them about their own jobs, and helped the students to thrive in their roles as mini-executives! In turn, BizWorld Academy gave Wells Fargo and it’s employees an opportunity to give back to their community by involving the volunteers in mentoring the students. It was a positive and inspiring event! The following is a list of questions that the students asked me. Q: What was your 1st job? A: I was a landscaper at age 13. In high school, I worked in a restaurant as a bus boy and then a server. In college I worked in a gym, and then I worked for a stock broker for free to gain some business experience. Q: What do you like most about your job? A: I love working with people! I like working with businesses of all sizes and learning about their products and services. It is very satisfying when we are able to help customers achieve their financial goals. Q: What do you like least? A: The paperwork can get kind of boring. There are a lot of complexities and regulatory requirements in our business that require careful documentation, which may not be the most interesting part of my job but it is certainly important. Q: What countries do you work with and send money to? A: My group sends money all over the world. We do a lot of work with Canada, Mexico, Japan, all over Europe and increasingly in China. Q: Why did you want to come and work at Wells Fargo? A: I was looking for a move back to the Bay Area. I really was impressed with the person that interviewed me from Wells Fargo. She was really smart and had a great personality. I knew that I wanted to learn from someone a lot smarter than me. Fast forward to today, and I have been working for that same person and at Wells Fargo for nearly 18 years now. Q: Do you know a foreign language? A: I wish I did, but I don’t. I wish I knew Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese and others. I would recommend that each of you learn at least 3 languages. Q: What inspires you? My wife and kids. I work hard for them. In addition, I love to learn new things. Read More: Part 2 Part 3

By Shin Noguchi, Marketing Assistant, BizWorld.org Excited and optimistic. These are the words I would use to describe the overarching, heart-warming feeling I got from our BizWorld Academy event last Thursday. I chose these words not only because we are in full swing for the holidays, but because after spending an entire 2 days with fifth graders from Richmond, CA, I felt like I made a difference in many childrens’ lives. We are so thankful to our partner, a leading financial investment management company in San Francisco, who generously sponsored our two-day academy that teaches children all about starting and running businesses. These programs are fun, hands-on and so engaging that the kids love it. They learned how to create a company,design and manufacture bracelets together, pitch their business ideas to volunteer investors, consider the merits of bank loans and paying interest, and sell all their bracelets at an incredible, volunteer-packed sales bazaar. I watched these children become budding entrepreneurs right in front of my own eyes. Amazing! Children are so impressionable and learn so quickly. With programs like ours, we can help children see the many careers and options available to them, the relevance of what they are learning in school, and how exciting hard work can be. That’s the coolest gift of all!

BizWorld.org is excited to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week! Today we celebrate our “International Partner of the Day” – BizWorld Mexico! “As business people with a great interest in the growth of the Mexican economy, we believe the best investment we can make is in our children. With BizWorld.org’s many years of experience in teaching entrepreneurship to kids, we believe they are a great fit for helping us accomplish our goal to educate the next generation of enterprising citizens.” – Roberto Malpica, Chairman of BizWorld.org Mexico

BizWorld.org is excited to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week! Today we celebrate our “International Partner of the Day” – BizWorld Denmark! “Entrepreneurship education has to be introduced at an earlier stage to school children in order to have a greater impact on society.” – Kari Andersen, Founder of BizWorld Denmark

BizWorld.org is excited to celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week! Today we celebrate our “International Partner of the Day” – BizWorld Ireland! “Education is seen traditionally as equipping young people with the skills and knowledge to complete a CV in order to get a job, but BizWorld Ireland is sowing the seeds in children to consider creating employment, taking in the CV and giving out the jobs.” – Fiona McKeon, CEO of BizWorld Ireland#entrepreneurship4kids

For three years, students at Petal Elementary School in Petal, Mississippi have been creating businesses to raise money for local charities that have a real significance in the students’ lives. Teachers at Petal Elementary have been using the BizWorld.org program to teach fourth graders in their gifted program how to run a business and how a business makes money. At the culmination of the program, students sell the friendship bracelets they have designed, produced and marketed, and donate the money to charity. They have raised money for the March of Dimes, because the community poster child was a Petal student; for the American Red Cross which helped so many people in the community after a devastating tornado; and three local children’s hospitals because of the impact the hospitals have had on Petal students and their families. “Selling the bracelets to raise money for these organizations was an excellent way to encourage our students to be charitable and make a contribution to our community,” said Mary Roberts, a teacher at Petal Elementary. In addition to teaching the students about giving, Roberts says the students gained other valuable skills during the program. “Through BizWorld’s project- based approach we have seen our students increase their leadership and teamwork skills, engage in decision making and problem solving, learn techniques of persuasion, and gain knowledge of business and finance,” Roberts commented. “Bizworld gives our students opportunities to be leaders, provides opportunities to use math skills and develop persuasive writing and speaking skills, and enables our students to get involved in their community by raising money for charities. Best of all, our students love the BizWorld program!” Thank you to Mary Roberts, Rhonda Emmons and Kelley Rinebold for sharing your story!

By Shefali Billon, Marketing and Communications Director Innovation, technology and inspiration were a buzz among educators, exhibitors and the community at the ISTE 2014 conference that just took place in Atlanta, Georgia. BizWorld.org was offered the opportunity to partner with ISTE for the fourth year in a row. With over 16,000 attendees from 67 countries, we announced to the education community our partnership with GoAnimate, the leading cloud-based animated video production platform, as the video production tool to power our BizMovie® 2.0 program. BizMovie 2.0 is a fun, project-based and innovative program that teaches kids about finance and business through building and running movie production companies. Schools that purchase BizMovie 2.0 receive a one year subscription to GoAnimate for Schools as well. We also had an opportunity to present how to make quality movies in the classroom and explore technology during our poster session at ISTE. We talked to all the attendees and answered questions about how kids gain real-world experience by learning how the entrepreneurial cycle works in a business while gaining hands-on technology experience. It was great to see so many teachers inquiring about how GoAnimate’s video production tool works and see live demos. Thanks again to ISTE for including BizWorld.org and GoAnimate at this year’s conference and for their continued partnership with us!

Nearly 300 business leaders throughout California came to the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco last Thursday evening, April 10, to support BizWorld.org and honor Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, executive chairman of Qualcomm Incorporated, at our third annual awards dinner. Twice a year BizWorld.org comes together to celebrate the impact our programs are having in kids’ lives around the world and honor one of today’s innovative leaders who serve as role models to children. The evening kicked off with guests networking at a cocktail reception. We also asked some of the business leaders in attendance to give today’s kids/tomorrow’s entrepreneurs some business tips. We captured those tips on video, which you can check out here on our Facebook and Instagram. Guests then came to the ballroom for the dinner program and were welcomed by the night’s emcee, KTVU reporter and co-anchor Heather Holmes. BizWorld.org CEO Thais Rezende gave a keynote address, impressing the crowd with BizWorld.org’s accomplishments and goals for the future. She also announced a partnership with GoAnimate, which is providing the online animation platform for the new BizMovie® 2.0 program. A fun highlight of the evening was the animated video from GoAnimate announcing their partnership with BizWorld.org. You can watch that video here and find out more about BizMovie 2.0 by watching this video. Thais also introduced the teachers and students who are featured in the BizMovie video and were attending the event. They were thrilled to be able to participate and have their photo taken with Dr. Jacobs! Event chair and CEO of Tibco, Vivek Ranadivé presented BizWorld.org’s Education Innovator Award to Dr. Paul Jacobs. Vivek gave a personal, heartwarming speech about Dr. Jacobs, talking about their early days together at Qualcomm as well as how they came to be co-owners of the Sacramento Kings NBA team. In his acceptance speech, Dr. Jacobs talked about the importance of kids learning technology at an early age and mentioned that “there are more cell phones in the world today than toothbrushes!” The evening wrapped up with a raffle for a beautiful diamond necklace worth $5,000 donated by BizWorld.org board member Stephen Silver of Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry. We’d like to thank everyone who attended the event, as well as the sponsors who made the event possible.

By Kara Brown, Education Manager “The most important thing I learned from BizWorld was how to spend money wisely.” These words of wisdom came from a 6th grade student in Anaheim, CA. As a former middle school teacher, I can tell you that most of the sixth graders I interacted with were much more concerned with Justin Bieber or the latest YouTube video sensation than finance. Maybe that’s because kids are constantly bombarded with a ton of different information and images about money and consumerism. However, very little of that information revolves around how to handle money responsibly. Many kids are growing up without being given the opportunity to learn about money, business, and the world of finance in their daily lives, let alone in the classroom. With the economic troubles that have come to light in the past few years, many people – both inside and outside of the classroom – have realized how vital it is to teach kids these skills. Last year, President Obama debuted the Money as you Grow campaign to promote financial literacy. Increasingly, the financial know-how and entrepreneurial spirit are being celebrated. Anyone remember Caine’s Arcade, the Internet sensation from 2012? These examples illustrate just how important it is make financial education a priority. Financial literacy standards, written by the Council for Economic Education, show what our students need most in order to have a well-rounded financial education, and they cover everything from saving and using credit to making wise investment choices. One of our goals here at BizWorld.org is to make sure our programs teach financial concepts in a FUN, yet comprehensive manner. In BizWorld – our flagship program – students work in teams to start, fund, and run their own friendship bracelet companies. Kids that participate in our programs don’t just practice leadership and teamwork skills; they learn the financial nitty gritty details that I wish I had learned as a kid. Words like profit, revenue, bank loan, and stock come up constantly in the students’ daily discussions about their business. Not only are 10 and 11 year olds using these terms, they’re actually showing they understand the concepts as they budget for their company’s expenses and create a successful business. Part of creating that successful business means raising start up funding for their company. In BizWorld, all students have the chance to pitch their business plan to an investor so they may sell shares of stock for cash. During the pitch, students put their negotiation skills to the test as they go back and forth deciding how many shares of stock to sell and for how much. As we’ve seen from shows like Shark Tank, this can be an intimidating and tricky situation to maneuver. I know that I would certainly be nervous when pitching to a potential investor! Yet time and again, I watch fifth graders enter a room confidently, shake hands with the investor, and speak clearly as they make a case for the amount their stock is worth based on their expenses and projected revenue. Once students have secured their start up funding, they shop for their supplies. Students really show off their financial savvy when they decide how much raw material to buy, whether to purchase in bulk or wholesale, and when they should just save their money. Hearing students prioritize and use critical thinking skills in regards to money is refreshing…and, it’s a life skill. So, in honor of Financial Literacy Month, I encourage all of you out there to bring some financial knowledge to your classroom! After all, how many of us can say we made it to adulthood and thought, I really wish I’d had less instruction on finance. Learn more about how BizWorld.org programs align to financial literacy standards!