SBT Editor
It was an old school building that wasn’t being used much. But a group of at-risk students met there for their alternative to traditional high school classes.
Victoria Van Asten worked with those students as a resource person.
To her, it was fun work – almost a game.
Until the day she met Julio in the sparsely-populated building one day.
Julio, who Van Asten describes as "a scary looking guy" among the group of "very at-risk" students, cornered Van Asten while no one was around. With his arm outstretched and hand on the wall, he trapped Van Asten.
"I was scared out of my mind," Van Asten recalls. "He literally had me cornered."
You can imagine what was going through her mind, especially when Julio posed the question: "What happens if they catch us?"
Julio and his fellow students had been selling T-shirts emblazoned with messages of support for US troops in the Persian Gulf during the effort to liberate Kuwait from Iraq.
Van Asten was working on that project with the students, who bought the raw shirts, processed them, and then sold them.
As thoughts of terror were racing through Van Asten’s mind, and as her heart was pounding excessively, she tried to reason with Julio, who finally broached the question:
"We’re buying these shirts for $5 and selling them for $10; this can’t be legal," Julio said to her, worrying about the consequences of such an "obviously illegal" activity.
"I was so relieved to hear that," said Van Asten, who spoke recently at the Wisconsin Venture Network luncheon in Milwaukee. "I told him, ‘This is how business works; this is how we feed our families.’ It was like a light bulb went on in his head. His face changed from one of anxiety to one of happiness, and he said, ‘I can do this.’"
The light went on in Van Asten’s head, too. "It changed my life," she recalls, noting how she went on to found the Institute for Entrepreneurship, based in Appleton. The organization works in creative ways to teach young people what business is all about, and how business people make a buck – legally.
Her efforts have blossomed. Last year, the organization attracted 540 students to Milwaukee from around the US for The Young Entrepreneur Conference and Business Competition. This year, she’s expecting that 600 or more students will come to Milwaukee for the event, set for April 4-6 at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel.
The students will hear from some adult entrepreneurs, including Watertown’s Marv Schumacher, president of Fram, Ltd., and Deborah Sawyer, president and CEO of Environmental Design International in Wauwatosa.
Van Asten is excited about the program. And she’s still appealing for established business owners and managers to support her efforts to teach young people how business works.
You can get more information on the April event and on The Institute for Entrepreneurship at its Web site, www.theeplace.org.
