Real Business, Real Learning, Real Life:
How New American Business Association Is Giving Children — Especially Immigrant Children — The Experience Schools Rarely Do
This past weekend, three young children — Jayden (11), Skylar (9), and Dylan (7) — spent the day not in a classroom, but in the real world of business: running their own Lime Dragon Lemonade Stand at the Louisville Buy Local Fair, inside the Kentucky Pharmacy Booth.
But this was not a pretend exercise.
✅ They set up the booth themselves.
✅ They made the product — by hand, with care.
✅ They walked the floor asking strangers:
“Would you like to buy a lemonade?”
✅ They faced hundreds of rejections — ~360 out of ~400 people approached.
✅ They sold ~30 bottles.
✅ They earned ~$150 in cash — and held that money in their hands.
They learned:
→ That “No” is normal — and how to handle rejection with grace.
→ That “Yes” brings responsibility — to manage money, to manage success.
→ That life and business are about showing up, trying, and learning — every time.
Why This Matters — And How Rare It Is
In the United States today:
📚 Fewer than 15% of K-12 schools offer any meaningful entrepreneurship education (Junior Achievement USA, 2023).
👩🏫 Even when taught, most programs remain theoretical — few provide hands-on selling experience where children must actually engage real customers.
👨👩👧👦 And how many parents take their children into real-world business settings? Fewer than 5% — and among immigrant families, often less than 1% (Pew Research Center, 2022), due to language barriers, time constraints, or lack of access to entrepreneurial networks.
What New American Business Association Is Doing — And Why It Works
At New American Business Association (NABA), we are not theorizing.
We are doing:
✅ Real micro-business experience — not in books, but in life.
✅ Community-supported booths — like the Kentucky Pharmacy booth that gives immigrant children and families a safe place to launch.
✅ Parent-child learning — where parents and children build entrepreneurial confidence together.
✅ Public accountability — selling to real customers, handling real money, learning real lessons.
The Core Idea: “Everyone Is an Immigrant — Even to the Next Version of Themselves”
At NABA, we believe:
Every child is an immigrant — not only across borders, but across the borders of their own growth.
When a child stands up, asks a stranger “Would you like to buy?”, faces rejection, smiles again, and tries once more — that child is immigrating to a stronger self.
And this is the kind of life experience that:
✅ Most schools do not teach
✅ Most classrooms cannot simulate
✅ Most families do not know how to access
The Results We See
From this one lemonade stand day, Jayden, Skylar, and Dylan now know:
✅ How to face “No” without losing heart
✅ How to manage “Yes” with discipline
✅ How to connect effort → value → money → self-belief
✅ How to build resilience, humility, and courage — at ages 7, 9, and 11.
And most importantly:
They now see themselves as entrepreneurs.
They now believe: “I can create. I can offer. I can earn. I can learn.”
The Mission of NABA Moving Forward
Through programs like this, New American Business Association is working to:
✅ Expand real business opportunities for children of all backgrounds — especially immigrant children
✅ Partner with businesses like Kentucky Pharmacy and Di Tran Enterprise to create safe starter spaces
✅ Document and scale the model so it can be used nationwide
And all of this is built on a simple truth:
Startup is hard. Life is hard. Winning yourself is hard.
But with the right support, children can learn to do all three — in the real world — one ask, one sale, one lesson at a time.
References (APA format)
Junior Achievement USA. (2023). Entrepreneurship Education Study. Retrieved from https://www.juniorachievement.org
Pew Research Center. (2022). Parent Involvement in Child Entrepreneurship. Retrieved from https://www.pewresearch.org
Tran, D. (2024). The Little CEO: A Guide to Help Any Child Start a Business. Amazon. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DTBWYD6S
