This is how the conversation usually goes when Dejah Cox tells her friends she has a job.
“They’re like, ‘oh really, what do you do?’” they’ll ask her.
Dejah: “I’m a beekeeper.”
“They’re like, ‘no!’” Dejah said with a chuckle. “They’re shocked.”
On a recent Saturday morning, the teenager donned full beekeeper regalia and flipped open the top of a hive in a vacant lot in north St. Louis. The honey she harvests will be used for an array of products, from lotions to body butter under the label Honey Masters.
At only 15 years old, Dejah is president of Sweet Sensations, an entrepreneurship program run by Northside Community Housing, Inc. Built on top of tried and true hands-on and project-based learning styles, Sweet Sensations plugs into a growing interest to teach business basics in real-world settings.
“The idea was that the youth would learn how to run the business, and that they would actually run it,” said Phil Minden, who helped found the program. “That’s exactly what’s happening.”
The six students in the program, two of whom are part of the STL Youth Jobs Program, are paid $10 an hour and can create matched college savings accounts. That, in turn, makes Sweet Sensations a dual education and employment program. Youth also get titles and are elected to positions like president, vice president and production manager. Along the way, they polish marketing campaigns, keep inventory and develop new products.
“Eventually, our goal is that the whole business will be self-sustaining,” said Minden. “That they’ll earn enough revenue every year to cover the cost of the program.”
Nationally, African Americans are lagging behind in business ownership. On top of that, in African-American households, business equity accounted for less than 4 percent of assets on average, a number that went down between 1983 and 2010, according to a Pew Research report. To chip away at those statistics, Sweet Sensations was designed to help develop entrepreneurial skills in African-American teens living in the Ville and Greater Ville neighborhoods.
Youth are put through a curriculum based on one developed by Junior Achievement, a nonprofit that teaches students business basics. And at 4:30 p.m. Friday, they’ll open a new shop at 4067 Lincoln Ave. in the Greater Ville neighborhood.
Though the space for the shop is donated, not all business services provided to the program are free. For instance, when students meet with an accountant they have to work the expense for the service into their budget. Youth also have to be light on their feet when navigating the logistical snags that come with bringing their product to market.
Take adding nutrition facts and bar codes to bottles of honey, for example. Dejah brushes it off as just part of the job.
“There aren’t that many nutrition facts,” Dejah said. “It’s all pure, urban honey.”
Then, there are the hives themselves. Some residents aren’t keen on hundreds of bees living in their neighborhood. And even before writing the grant, Minden had to craft his pitch to members of Northside Community Housing, Inc.’s board of directors who were leery of the idea.
“There were a lot of concerns about insurance and things like that,” Minden said. “But we were able to convince them that we had procedures in place where the kids would be fully protected. And that we would act in a responsible manner so that they could be successful in this business and not be harmed at all.”
Minden, an avid beekeeper, guides students through hands on lessons.
“Selfishly, I helped write the grant for this program so I could take care of more hives,” he joked.
La’Jazia Elijah, the 16-year-old vice president of Sweet Sensations, was antsy when she first peered into a hive teeming with honey bees.
“Two bees landed on me and I got scared,” La’Jazia said. “But nothing bad happened. It was cool.”
Jason Wilson, who owns Chronicle Coffee, said he wasn’t sure what to expect when he scheduled a meeting with a handful of teenagers from Sweet Sensations.
“I was impressed,” Wilson said. “Because they’re young and the amount of knowledge they had.”
Wilson has had his ear bent by many a salesperson. But he said the secret to Sweet Sensations was that it didn’t really feel like he was getting a pitch at all.
“There was this spiel they gave me, but it was natural and authentic, rather than contrived and forced,” Wilson said. “I like that about them. I didn’t see them as kids anymore; I saw them as entrepreneurs who have a product.”
Edited for length and reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
