NFTE Philadelphia’s field trips represent a key learning experience for our students. For the past couple of years, NFTE students all around the country have enjoyed taking a field trip to their local Sam’s Clubs, often learning from Club Managers about Sam’s history and touring the store. These trips are ideal for enhancing students’ experiential, real-world learning related to class lessons about buy low, sell high, how wholesale businesses work and how they work with small businesses. NFTE Philadelphia is using the money from our microproject “Teaching Business Student the Fundamentals for Success” on the Give For Youth platform, along with other contributions, to organize our annual Sam’s Club trips for this year.
One such trip is coming up. Approximately 17 students from Parkway Northwest High School will participate in a fun, experiential learning opportunity through a field trip to the Franklin Mills Sam’s Club in North Philadelphia on May 29th. During the field trip, students must complete a variety of activities to test their business and sales knowledge. The young entrepreneurs are assigned to small groups, and each group is given a scenario that presents a business opportunity. The students brainstorm a business idea that meets the challenge presented in the scenario. Next the group must find up to 10 items on the Sam’s Club shelves that could be purchased to run the business and they record the prices of those items. Students then return to the staging area and present their idea to the larger group. The group with the best idea/presentation wins $25 to spend at Sam’s Club in support of their own businesses. In a follow-up classroom activity, students research the regular retail price per unit of each item on their scavenger hunt list and compare the savings an entrepreneur or small businesses owner is provided by purchasing these items at Sam’s Club. This partnership with Sam’s Club, aided in small part by our funders on Give For Youth, remains a key opportunity for NFTE Philadelphia in our hands-on entrepreneurial curriculum.
