By Moneth G. Deposa
Variety News Staff

OVER 150 students at Kagman Elementary School held two days of business learning activities on their campus during their second annual Market Days program.
Five fifth grade classes participated by offering a variety of food, toys and games on Monday and Tuesday.
The Market Days program allows students to apply business concepts they have learned by selling products or services to the school community and evaluating their business plans and success or failure afterward.
“This is our second year and it has been very successful,” said Yewubmrt Cruz, a fifth grade teacher in charge of the event.
Kagman Elementary is the only CNMI school that has received a grant from the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education which allows KagES to extend “loans” to student business teams that then purchases supplies and materials to be sold during the two-day event.
At the end of the event, teams will have to pay back their loans from the sales they generated. They will keep and divide among the team members any profit that is left.
“We want to develop our students’ critical thinking in looking for something to sell or buy,” Cruz said. “We want them to learn to work together in a group, make the right decisions and choices, and be responsible for their actions.”
Cruz said each class made daily sales of between $150 and $200.
“We have a lot of toys and drinks that we sold to students. We got $25.89 this morning alone and that’s a good start,” fifth grader Enola Saures said.
Each group was loaned $100 and had to do its own advertising, selling and bookkeeping.
Elvin Quitugua, also a fifth grader, said his group sold almost of their items with prices ranging from $1 to $3 each.
“We sold a lot today especially our toys. We made good sales to kindergarten and first graders who mostly bought our products,” he said.
Quitugua said he learned that effective advertising is a factor that has to be considered in doing any business.
“It’s not only about selling and buying. We also learned how effective advertising can attract customers. Basically this gives us an idea how to start a small business,” he said.