THUNDER BAY — A school project of baked goods, snacks and other treats helped raise money for the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Students in grades 9 and 11 at St. Ignatius High School had a class business project earlier this year to develop a product to sell to students and determine their costs and what kind of profits could be made.
Grade 11 student Cassidy told TBnewswatch that, in hindsight, she and her group likely wouldn't have changed anything.
"We had to do tons of calculations on our purchases and whatnot and figure out a good price to put our products at," Cassidy said, adding they were making a considerable profit off of the cookie dough they were selling. "The point where we had our price at, we had it at $4 we're roughly making $3.50 profit per product we sold."
Another grade 11 student, Mason, noticed that certain items sold very quickly.
"I think we sold out everything, but the hot dog group sold out very quickly, like within a few minutes, they sold out fast," he said.
In addition to doing a class project and crunching numbers, the profits that were made by the market sales were donated to the Thunder Bay branch.
A $1,600-cheque was presented to the agency by the students, supervising teacher and the school's principal.
Dan Sabbe, the senior manager of finance and business operations, noted that the money would help fund some of their programs.
"The funds are going towards our education and training programs that help out with suicide prevention, mental health awareness, family supports and lots of other programming that we put on," Sabbe said, adding there isn't a specific target audience, but that mental health awareness and education can start at a young age.
"I think everything really starts at a young age and then going from there having that base concept of what mental health is and how it affects everybody on an individual level ... really helps students and younger people realize things earlier on in life versus it coming a time later in life."
The student market was put on twice this year, in the first and second semesters at St. Ignatius.
