Junior Achievement at Colegio San Martin: Spotlight on Micolem

What is it?

The Junior Achievement Program, or “La Compañia” as it’s known in Peru, allows high school students to embark on business endeavors and get first-hand experience in what it is like running a business. During the program, students build and execute micro-companies - from business plan to production to liquidation - learning a range of skills such as planning, operations, marketing, management, and strategic analysis. The goal is to have the students contribute to and engage their communities.

The team

The team from Coprodeli’s San Martin School in Pachacutec wanted to capitalize on a culturally important, artistic market opportunity: Marginalized Peruvian communities highly value traditional paintings, but originals and framing are often out of their price range. The students collaborated with a local artist and bought printings of his original canvas paintings and then built their own wooden frames to mount the paintings on.

The team splits up and sells these pieces throughout various markets in Pachacutec and Lima as well as other events such as at school celebrations or in their communities.

Their goals

The goal of this year’s class was to sell enough paintings to fund a group graduation trip to Cusco - an opportunity inaccessible to the majority of marginalized community members. They sold each mounted painting for 10 Soles (approximately $4) but only profited half of that due to cost of materials for the frames. They calculated that they would need to sell 800 paintings a person in order to make their dream come true. We wish them all the best of luck as they continue working hard to reach their goal!

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