Roosevelt Island Girl Scouts Meet Roosevelt Island Female Business Owners To Learn How To Start Their Own Small Business - Earn Business Owner Badge Too

Roosevelt Island Girl Scout Troop 3001 Leader Aiesha Eleusizov reports:

Last Monday, two Roosevelt Island female business owners visited our Junior Girl Scout meeting to share their experiences owning and running a small business and provided mentor advice to the girls for designing their own business. The fourth and fifth grade girls in our troop are working on their Business Owner badge and these two women professionals helped them complete two of the five requirements necessary to earn this badge.

Nina Freedman, architect and owner of Dreamland and Beauty Freemantle, acunpuncturist and owner of Island Acupuncture and Wellness exposed the girls to two very different types of careers. They described what they do in their respective job, shared the joys and challenges of running their own business and explained education and training is needed for their career. The girls were particularly fascinated with seeing the tools of the trade that Nina and Beauty brought - especially the small scale models of apartment interiors used to design re-models and the needles and suction cups used for acupuncture.

Nina and Beauty's panel discussion helped excite the girls to think about how to turn something they love to do into a business of their own. The girls each wrote a brief plan describing their own business ideas. Nina and Beauty then worked with the girls individually to help them think through ideas for their own small business and provided feedback to the girls on ways they could improve their plans.

Here are a few of the ideas the girls had for their own businesses (many wanted to think of a business they could do now):

• cat sitting
• pet grooming
• selling slime
• nail salon
• bath and beauty products
• food critic (freelance journalist)
• bakery

A very special thank you to Nina and Beauty for helping inspire our next generation of women entrepreneurs!