By Diana Walker, Oyen Echo
Some of the students of Hughenden Public School are very familiar with turning lemons into lemonade. Since 1993 those students participating in H.P.S. Manufacturing have not only organized and operated a business, they have made a profit doing so.
Three students told the story of the custom metal fabrication operation at the Youth Entrepreneur Conference in Oyen on May 3.
Enrollment each semester has been as high as 22 with 11 students in each of two groups working 80 minute classes. These 15-18 year olds tackle between 150 and 300 projects each year ranging from signs for businesses or farms to metal graphics and weather vanes.
Marketing is done at trade fairs including Farm Fair in Edmonton and the Calgary Stampede, through advertising and by word of mouth.
Some students have one job, others have several.
Students fulfill all positions in the company including management and production.
They have an office staff with receptionist and office manager. They take care of public relations, cost estimates, quotations for customers, advertising, promotion, cost analysis.
They create layouts, operate computers, use the plasma cutter, grind, weld, buff and paint the pipe. They do quality control and track the job from beginning to end. They enjoy giving tours.
Students are even expected to grade each other, counting for 25-30 percent of their mark.
Profits from the business are used to buy new machines and material for the shop, to provide $3,000 to $7,000 in bursaries and scholarships to participants, to donate toward charities, to buy basketball uniforms and a camera for the school, to assist a young person who had to travel to eastern Canada for surgery.
H.P.S. Manufacturing made the signs that now mark the sites of over 100 former one-room schools commissioned by the Oyen & District Historical Society under the direction of Nellie Eaton.
Joey Klassen, 15, does grinding, buffs pipes and occasionally paints. Before he joined the shop he had no experience making signs or in running a business. In a few short weeks his knowledge of both skyrocketed. This is his first year in HPS Manufacturing.
Travis Manning, also 15, started HPS at the start of the new semester and has managed to be the main welder and the shop foreman.
Ruben Andrist, born in 1984 in Muri, Switzerland, chose Canada for his international exchange country because he loves to play hockey and wanted to play in Canada. The exchange organization placed him in Czar, and from there he was put into the Hughenden Public School. The jobs he handles are painting, buffing, pipe grinding and running the plasma cutter.
Grant Collins is the teacher in charge of the HPS Manufacturing Program at Hughenden Public School. He says the students do all the work, while he only guides and encourages them.
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Some of the students of Hughenden Public School are very familiar with turning lemons into lemonade. Since 1993 those students participating in H.P.S. Manufacturing have not only organized and operated a business, they have made a profit doing so.
Three students told the story of the custom metal fabrication operation at the Youth Entrepreneur Conference in Oyen on May 3.
Enrollment each semester has been as high as 22 with 11 students in each of two groups working 80 minute classes. These 15-18 year olds tackle between 150 and 300 projects each year ranging from signs for businesses or farms to metal graphics and weather vanes.
Marketing is done at trade fairs including Farm Fair in Edmonton and the Calgary Stampede, through advertising and by word of mouth.
Some students have one job, others have several.
Students fulfill all positions in the company including management and production.
They have an office staff with receptionist and office manager. They take care of public relations, cost estimates, quotations for customers, advertising, promotion, cost analysis.
They create layouts, operate computers, use the plasma cutter, grind, weld, buff and paint the pipe. They do quality control and track the job from beginning to end. They enjoy giving tours.
Students are even expected to grade each other, counting for 25-30 percent of their mark.
Profits from the business are used to buy new machines and material for the shop, to provide $3,000 to $7,000 in bursaries and scholarships to participants, to donate toward charities, to buy basketball uniforms and a camera for the school, to assist a young person who had to travel to eastern Canada for surgery.
H.P.S. Manufacturing made the signs that now mark the sites of over 100 former one-room schools commissioned by the Oyen & District Historical Society under the direction of Nellie Eaton.
Joey Klassen, 15, does grinding, buffs pipes and occasionally paints. Before he joined the shop he had no experience making signs or in running a business. In a few short weeks his knowledge of both skyrocketed. This is his first year in HPS Manufacturing.
Travis Manning, also 15, started HPS at the start of the new semester and has managed to be the main welder and the shop foreman.
Ruben Andrist, born in 1984 in Muri, Switzerland, chose Canada for his international exchange country because he loves to play hockey and wanted to play in Canada. The exchange organization placed him in Czar, and from there he was put into the Hughenden Public School. The jobs he handles are painting, buffing, pipe grinding and running the plasma cutter.
Grant Collins is the teacher in charge of the HPS Manufacturing Program at Hughenden Public School. He says the students do all the work, while he only guides and encourages them.
Want to Subscribe to The Provost News? Click here.
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