Editorial

Security

Politics

World

Letters

Sports

Obituaries

Archives

by Gamini Warushamana

"As children we only knew how to spend the money earned by our parents. But today, we know how to earn. Now we don't have any fear about our future and we don't worry whether we get a job or not after an university degree."

"We have confidence today that we can provide one or two jobs for others". This was the view of young Omalika Ravindrani Jayathilake of Fergusion High School, Ratnapura, an up and coming entrepreneur.

Omalika won the award for the most outstanding young entrepreneur for the year at the seventh Annual Young Entrepreneurs Awards ceremony at the BMICH in Colombo last Monday. Omalika is the Chairman of the skiff Company of Fergusion High School.The young entrepreneurs are gaining experience on how to run a business from childhood under the Young Entrepreneurs Sri Lanka (YESL) program.

The companies are registered at YESL and all of them have to follow similar rules and regulations an ordinary company has to follow.

There are six directors in skiff and we started with 3,000 issued shares at Rs.10 each. The company targeted the market in the school itself and they first produced and sold food products.

Then fancy items bought from the Pettah wholesale market were sold in the school. Since this is a girls' school we felt there would be a high demand for these items and we were correct, she said.

Omalika said that the program has provided much experience in leadership, how to face challenges, fulfil a target within a given timeframe as well as business matters such as opening and dealing with current accounts, holding board meetings, accounting and auditing. Now we know how to run even a "Bulathwita Kade" successfully, she said.

Fergusion High School Ratnapura is more active this year. Vibrant and Aube are the other two companies of the school and they had opened separate stalls at the YESL exhibition. They started with Rs.30,000 and Rs.17,000 capital. Greeting cards and pillow cases were turned out by them. Key tags and selling ice cream in the school are some of the other business activities carried out by these companies.

www.ceylincoproperties.com

| News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security |
| Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries | Junior Observer |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager