Business Plan - Vibrant Youngster

Team Details Project Title:

Vibrant Youngster !"# $%&

Project Logo

Name of Leader:

Melody Xinyan Zhong

Name of Member:

Moe Ming Man Yu

Name of Member:

Ryan Tsang Fai Chan

Name of Member:

Felix Wing Hong Chung

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................ 2 SOCIAL CONCEPT........................................................................................................................................... 3 THE PROBLEM .................................................................................................................................................... 3 VISION AND MISSION ........................................................................................................................................ 3 THEORY OF CHANGE ......................................................................................................................................... 3 OUR SOLUTION .................................................................................................................................................. 4 PROGRAM DETAIL ......................................................................................................................................... 5 SUMMER CAMP .................................................................................................................................................. 5 SCHOOL TERM ................................................................................................................................................... 7 SOCIAL VALUE AND IMPACT .................................................................................................................... 8 TARGET MARKET........................................................................................................................................... 8 COMPETITION ................................................................................................................................................. 9 PROMOTION AND SOCIAL MARKETING............................................................................................. 10 PARTNERSHIP AND SPONSORSHIP........................................................................................................ 10 PARTNERSHIP ................................................................................................................................................... 10 SPONSORSHIP ................................................................................................................................................... 11 TEAM PLAN ..................................................................................................................................................... 12 IMPACT MONITORING AND EVALUATION ........................................................................................ 12 FINANCIAL PLAN .......................................................................................................................................... 12 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN.......................................................................................................................... 14 PHASE 0............................................................................................................................................................ 14 PHASE 1............................................................................................................................................................ 14 PHASE 2............................................................................................................................................................ 15 RISK AND OPPORTUNITY .......................................................................................................................... 15 RISKS ................................................................................................................................................................15 OPPORTUNITY .................................................................................................................................................. 16 FUNDING REQUEST...................................................................................................................................... 17

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Executive Summary In all known history to date, human has always tried different ways to the prolong lifespan of ourselves. Often not aware of the importance of a balanced life, our lifestyles are generally unhealthy, and opposes to our desire to live longer. In the past century, we have scientifically discovered the rudimentary elements of a healthy life, yet we have failed to follow a lifestyle that conforms to those important health factors. Over-weight can increase the chances of metabolic complications such as ventricular hypertrophy, hyerlipideamia, liver problems, etc; it is the root cause of many life-threatening diseases. Our society is aware of the overweight problem, but most of our actions towards this issue are desperate measures such as starvation and surgeries.

Moreover, obesity problem in our younger generations are getting more and more severe.

In Hong Kong, there are over 550,000 primary school children, where around 17% of them are considered overweight. There are many causes contributing to this growing problem. One of the major reasons is because there are simply not enough focus on physical health in Hong Kong's current education system. Students are constantly challenged academically throughout their childhood, and parents seems to loose focus of the importance of exercising. Secondly, there simply are not enough outdoor facilities that are accessible for our children to play. The opportunity to participate in school's team sports are often determined by the athletic ability of the child, which the fits get fitter, and the fats get fatter.

Studies have shown that children who do not develop an interest in exercise has a hugh chance of developing an addiction for video game, which they see it as an easy source of psychological success and achievement. This leads to the lack of personal interaction and can often reason to lowering a child's self-confidence and self-estieem. As a result, overweight children often isolate themselves and seek comfort from video games, TV, or even from over-eating. These children grow up into young adults with back pain, tireness, heart problems and other life threatening issues, that will affect our society in years to come. All in all, we need not to blame anyone for the growing number of overweight children. This vicious cycle of unhealthy lifestyle can be changed if we can introduce a positive and encouraging environment for the overweight children, where they can learn to live a healthy lifestyle with sports and good eating habits.

We propose a project call Vibrant Youngster. The solution is simple. We can make exercising fun and interactive, where kids can develop physical strength and athletic skills while learning the importance of healthy eating and lifestyle. The awareness of physical fitness can be taught by introducing simple warm-up exercises for them to do at home, like push ups, sit-ups, jumping-jacks and dancing. The program will develop their athletic abilities by teaching them basics of football, basketball and other team sports. Food knowledge and good eating habits can be taught by incorporating concepts into mini sports games.

A major focus of the program has to do with the soft skills development of a child. We provide an environment where children have to work together in group settings. This provides them with opportunity to learn from others and have a chance to assist peers. Children will have the opportunity to encourage and be encouraged, setting a positive, effective, and memorable

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learning experience for them. The result of this are kids acquiring an intrinsic motivation to exercise, higher self-confidence in school, increased stamina for work and play, and good eating habit for the rest of their lives.

Social Concept The problem Currently in Hong Kong, there are 550,000 children in the primary school, of which 20% of boys and 14% of girls are categorized as obese, according to a recent new report from Chinese University of Hong Kong in September 2008. In the last 10 years, the number of over-weight school children has rapidly increased 5%. The report has also concludes that kids who are obese often grow up developing serious heart diseases and liver problems in their early adulthood.

Overall, obese children also have lower self-esteem and confidence.

The education system in Hong Kong weighs heavily on academics and completely neglects the importance of the physical development of our next generation. Furthermore, Hong Kong parents do not understand the link between physical fitness and strong academic performance. According to joint research by the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Institute of Education, 60% of parents and children in Hong Kong have not developed the habit of regular physical activity.

As a result, childhood obesity is one of the biggest long-term issues we are facing in Hong Kong today.

Vision and Mission With close to one-fifth of our children being over-weight, Hong Kong needs to incorporate new elements to the current education system in order to make a positive impact on our future leaders.

An innovative extra-curricular program can introduce more opportunities for kids to exercise.

Such a program can cultivate school children to live a healthy life style. With an unique learning model called "Multiple Intelligence", we not only provide school children fitness skills and knowledge but also help them manage social skills and teamwork. By providing our children with a well-balanced upbringing, our next generation will grow up to be physically healthier. In a long run, they will be intellectually smarter, have higher self-confidence and better social skills.

Theory of Change By interviewing with experienced educational psychologist we will enhance children's motivation to exercise and to live a healthier lifestyle, we will make use of a proven educational model call "Multiple Intelligence" (developed in 1983 by Dr Howard Gardner at Harvard University) which incorporate multiple teaching styles to address the eight different intelligence aspects of a child, opening a broader range of the child's potential and enhancing the learning experience (please refer to appendix for Multiple Intelligence Model diagram).

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By including some of these teaching styles, with activities such as sports, songs and music, interpersonal connections, communication and leadership exercises, etc, we will be able to develop an intrinsic motivation within a child, thus creating a prolong motive for the child to adopt exercise as part of his/her lifestyle.

Our Solution Our business plan will be to start a children fitness training organization in Hong Kong called "Vibrant Youngster" that is dedicated to providing customized extra-curricular activities for overweight primary school students to help them lose weight and reduce their risk of future health problems. With the help of the Multiple Intelligence methodology, these activities will be designed to be more motivational, inspirational and fun than the schools' current physical education classes.

We will provide customized fitness classes with a variety of sports for their kids, which will help them lose weight, exercise and have fun at the same time. All students will be divided into two groups, Grade 1 to 3 and Grade 4 to 6. For each group, there will be a 6-weeks long summer fitness day camp with 2 sessions per week (total of 12 sessions) and during the school year, a 32-weeks long weekend session with 1 session per week (total of 32 sessions). In each session, the children will learn about different topics such as healthy eating, good diet, exercise and self esteem, which will be followed by a few sport games and mini games to build on what they just learned. A more detailed program description follows in the next section.

Besides the above program for the children, we will also promote to primary schools and parents We will highlight on the following innovative points of our organization: • We provide healthy dietary course during the school-term period to both the students and the parents • We offer monthly exchanged programs with other outdoor associations, such as the Hong Kong Football Association, to motivate the children to do more sports and be sociable • We offer scholarships sponsored by local tutoring companies to promote a balance of academic and exercise • At the end of the summer camp, we hold sports contests sponsored by sportswear manufacturer such as Nike and Adidas.

• We offer expert advice and personal monitoring of the children's progress. We will keep a record of everyone's weight, height and physical condition. We will email updates according to the advice of health experts on weight and height measurements and parents useful information each month, and then hold a monthly seminar with them to help them know how their child is progressing. During the seminar, health or media experts offer necessary advice. Having this consultation will greatly enhance the quality of our service because we can improve our service by talking to our target customers and knowing what they need.

• Form "Parents Community" groups for parents to share their experience of educating children to live healthier.

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Program Detail Summer Camp Summer camp will be the phase 1 of our project. We will provide a 6-week summer camp which will last from July to August. It will consist of 2 sessions per week for a total of 12 sessions.

We will design three main themes for these 12 weeks. The themes are related to typical sports, such as basketball, football, handball, dodge ball, track and field, badminton. These will be taught in rotation, i.e. week 1 and 4 will be for basketball, week 2 and 5 for football, and week 3 and 6 for field.

According to our participants’ physical condition, we will design a series of mini game and exercises to help them to lose weight, to teach them some sport knowledge and let them to experience fun of sport. We will make sure that the level of activity and sport should be matched to the child.

Around 15 minute’s warm-up section will be set before any mini game. We will design an easy warm-up exercise, and it include stretches that help lengthen muscles and boost blood flow and temperature. This readies the muscles for the activities and makes injury less likely.

15 minutes of break time will be set after every 30 to 45 minutes of exercise. Each session will have some discussion time to teach the children on some basic topics such as healthy eating, exercises, etc. In this session, they will have time to sharing about their daily-life related to diet and fitness. Through those discussions, tutors will encourage them to have healthier life. The purpose of this discussion time is to encourage the student to speak up, share and respect other.

Some healthy snacks and juice will be served during the time period, Discussion Part 2.

All sports and mini games played after each discussion session will be related to what they just learned about health life and diet, and thus, increase their understanding of what they learned.

At the end of class, we will pass out a different mission letter for all students. The mission letter will request the students to do something with their family that relates to health life, such as eating more vegetables or exercising for 15 minutes every day. The student will need to report if they accomplished their mission in the next class. Some rewards may be passed when the student achieved the goal.

We will encourage parent to do exercise with their kids during weekend. We will send an email to all participants' parent asking them to report on their kids' condition and regularly update their nutritional and health information or tips.

All sessions for the summer camp will take place during the weekdays.

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All children will be

divided into two groups with children in grade 1 to 3 in Group A and children in grade 4 to 6 in group B.

Week 1Theme A Week 2Theme B Week 3Theme C Week 4Theme A Week 5Theme B Week 6Theme C

Monday

Tuesday

Sport 1 Group A Sport 2 -

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Sport 1 Group B Sport 2 -

Sport 1 Group A Sport 2 -

Sport 1 Group B Sport 2 -

Group A Sport 3 -

Group B Sport 3 -

Group A Sport 3 -

Group B Sport 3 -

Group A Sport 1 -

Group B Sport 1 -

Group A Sport 1 -

Group B Sport 1 -

Group A Sport 2 -

Group B Sport 2 -

Group A Sport 2 -

Group B Sport 2 -

Group A Sport 3 Group A

Group B Sport 3 Group B

Group A Sport 3 Group A

Group B Sport 3 Group B

Beside sports, there will be some mini games for each session that will help the children understand more about healthy eating, exercise, etc. These mini games will be related to what they just learned and may include beanbag throwing, 3-legged races, dances, etc.

For each session, there will be two different timetables for each group of children to fit each group's needs and interests. The details of each timetable are as follow: Group A (aged from 6-9)

Group A will have a total of 45 minutes of discussion and 2 hours of exercise and sports.

Children in this age group will enjoy games and activities such as tag, kickball, and other things they can play with family and friends. Those activities will promote large and small muscle development and coordination. Therefore, we will set more time to play fun mini game which is easy-achieved and enjoyable. Music and funny drawing will be added to these exercises and mini game to attract and motivate them to play the games. The sports and games are spread out to give breaks to the children frequently. We have 3 discussions, each followed by sports and games in order to help the children learn and understand what they learned better.

Summer Term

Group A (Grade 1 to 3)

10:00 - 10:15

Discussion Part 1

10:15 - 10:30

Warm-up

10:30 - 11:00

Mini-game

11:00 - 11:15

Discussion Part 2

11:15 - 12:00

Sport game

12:00 - 12:15

Discussion Part 3

12:15 - 12:45 12:45 - 13:00

Mini-games Parents Pickup

Group B (aged from 10-13)

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Group B will have 45 minutes of discussion and 2 hours of exercise and sports. As kids get older, they begin to enjoy and benefit from organized sports and other school and community activities.

These activities will continue to promote muscle development and coordination, while children begin to learn how to follow rules within a structured routine. The sport game will involve more about game rule and organization, so they can experience more about team-work. A series of exercise and games is more difficult than group A, because increasing difficulties of games will avoid older children to be boring. This sport game is longer for this group because they will be less likely to get tired and continuous exercise will help reduce weight quickly. The session ends with a discussion period where the children can calm down and leave with a summary of what they learned in that session.

Each summer camp participants will receive a Certificate of Achievement to help boost their self-esteem and give them a sense of achievement.

School Term During the school year, we will have a 32-week long exercise/sports camp, from September to June, inclusive. The program will be designed not to interfere with their exams during January or June. There will be 1 session each Saturday morning (Group A) or afternoon (Group B), for a total of 32 sessions in the whole year. Each month will focus on two sports and in the next month, another 2 sports will be chosen. Below shows the rotations that of sports for each 4 week period: Saturday Morning

Saturday Afternoon

Week 1

Sport 1 - Group A

Sport 1 - Group B

Week 2

Sport 2 - Group A

Sport 2 - Group B

Week 3 Week 4

Sport 1 - Group A Sport 2 - Group A

Sport 1 - Group B Sport 2 - Group B

The timetable for each session for each group will be similar to the summer term: School Term 10:00 - 10:15 10:15 - 10:30 10:30 - 11:00 11:00 - 11:15 11:15 - 12:00 12:00 - 12:15 12:15 - 12:45 12:45 - 13:00 Summer Term 14:00 - 14:15 14:15 - 14:30 14:30 - 15:15 15:15 - 15:30

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Group A (Grade 1 to 3) Discussion Part 1 Warm-up Mini-game Discussion Part 2 Sport game Discussion Part 3 Mini-games Parents Pickup Group B (Grade 4 to 6) Discussion Part 1 Warm-up Mini-games Discussion Part 2

15:30 - 16:30 16:30 - 16:45 16:45 - 17:00

Sport game Discussion Part 3 Parents Pickup

In each session, we will have an instructor that will look over a group of 10 to 15 children, based on their physical dimensions and other factors. This way, the instructor can focus on customizing specific ways of teaching and exercises to the specialized group of students.

Each participant in our school term sport camp will not only receive a Certificate of Achievement at the end but also a t-shirt at the beginning of the program. By doing this, we are providing the parents an incentive to continue enrolling their children in our program and a reward for being a consistent customer.

Social Value and Impact The social impact we hope to achieve is to change the current childhood obesity situation in Hong Kong and help these obese students live normal and healthier life like other students. Our program will be able to achieve this through the various extra-curricular activities that were mentioned in the above section.

To measure our social impact and the success of our program in two ways – quantitatively and qualitatively: Quantitative measures: measure the weight, height and the physical condition of the child before and after several attendance of the program and see if there is a positive effect Qualitative measure: 1. Measure children's confidence and self-esteem through simple survey. Overall, a clear indication of success would be a significant change in the child's attitude and behavior, i.e. the child is much happier.

2. Measure parents' satisfaction through simple survey.

While the quantitative outcome that we see is short term and have a time period of only a few months, the qualitative outcome described can lasts forever. It is able to change the children for the better. Therefore, we hope to achieve both short-term and long-term results.

Target Market It is estimated that 20% of boys and 14% of girls in primary schools have obesity problems – almost a potential market size of at least 93,000 students. Our target customers will be overweight children aged 7 to 13 and their parents in different school communities in Hong Kong.

These children usually have low confidence. Indirectly, we will also target school principals, teachers and PTA (Parent Teacher Associations) which can provide the direct links to our target Business Plan

customers. The schools initially targeted will have higher percentages of obese students than other schools.

We have access to these target customers through school principals, teachers and PTA's (Parent-Teacher Associations). To reach the vast number of students, we will first promote our ideas to a few schools where the ratio of obese students is high, and as interests grow, we will expand to other schools. As our program become more successful, the program will become more recognized and the potential growth rate is huge. In the future, we will consider schools and other associations as partners.

Competition Hong Kong has many youth associations, such as YMCA, YWCA, Hong Kong Youth Association, which provide a lot of physical courses during summer. These courses teach children different sport skills, and sometimes, they will hold some summer camps to improve the children’s psychological and social development. However, they seldom have projects that focus on obesity children and thus, we consider them as our minor competitors because we are more focused on getting obese children to reduce their weight and live a healthy lifestyle.

Physical education classes in Hong Kong’s primary schools are also one of our minor competitors. However, it is obvious that the system does not provide enough exercise and does not place individual attention on each children. Therefore, our program will pay more attention to and concern about them, which helps us to distinguish from existing physical education classes.

Within this decade, the problem of children obesity is increasing and society had started to be more concerned about this issue. Some fitness centers open exercise classes for kids, but they do not focus on obese children. Recently, some Hong Kong hospitals, such as Kwong Wah Hospital in Kowloon, have held courses to help obese kids lower their weight. The results show that obesity can be reduced after the course. However, in comparison with our program, their course did not have a plan in the psychological and social development of the children and they cannot help these kids to develop a interest in sport. To increase the children's interest in sport is very important because it is the most effective in reducing obesity and maintaining good health.

Another competitor to our program is the Active Kids Sports Club program which is hosted by Hong Kong University’s Institute of Human Performance. While this program does not focus on obese children, it does provide children to play in various sports such as wall climbing, basketball and soccer. They only hold 1 session per week, 2 hours per session, 12 weeks per class and the fees are much higher. We can compete with this program from HKU because we hold 2 sessions per week, 4 hours per session, 12 weeks per class and our fees are much less.

As well, our focus is on obese children and therefore, our activities and methods of exercise are more geared towards helping them reduce obesity.

Another competitor to our program is the Active Kids Sports Club program which is hosted by Hong Kong University’s Institute of Human Performance. While this program does not focus on

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obese children, it does provide children to play in various sports such as wall climbing, basketball and soccer. They only hold 1 session per week, 2 hours per session, 12 weeks per class and the fees are much higher. We can compete with this program from HKU because we hold 2 sessions per week, 4 hours per session, 12 weeks per class and our fees are much less. As well, our focus is on obese children and therefore, our activities and methods of exercise are more geared towards helping them reduce obesity.

Promotion and Social Marketing To reach our target audience and increase our status on the market, we will design several strategies to promote our organization. We will begin by taking the following actions: • designing a series of promotion materials for our program, including posters and brochures, and send them to all primary schools in Hong Kong • presenting our program to teachers, school committees and parent-teacher associations in all primary schools in Hong Kong • holding presentations or seminars in primary schools with students and parents, to promote the importance of regular fitness and a healthy lifestyle • promoting our program to the department of pediatrics in all hospitals in Hong Kong and sending them our program's brochure • introducing our program to some children's magazine, such as Yellow bus and Whiz-kids Express Weekly • creating our organization's website, which contains health information, to reach those young parents who is online a lot We hope to bring the awareness of obesity children in the seminar and send a message to parents that keeping exercise regularly is the most effective way to fight obese.

Partnership and sponsorship Partnership Our program includes not only physical training for obesity kids, but also nutritional education and childhood psychology. Experts and professionals with these specific knowledge and background can help us to strengthen our program a lot, so we will invite academic groups to be our partners and advisers, such as Hong Kong Sports Institute, Hong Kong Institute of Education, the Department of Physical Education of City University of Hong Kong, the Department of Psychology and School of Biological Sciences of the University of Hong Kong, the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Education in the Faculty of Medicine of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

For monitoring the quality of our program, we will invite their professors or specialists to have a meeting with us regularly for comments. We will cooperate with these academics to create an Business Plan

internship program that can allow their students to become tutors or assistants in our program.

We will provide a free training course for them. The experience of teaching in our program is helpful for them in their future career because they can experience how to use fun activities to motivate children to learn.

To enhance and strengthen our program, our program will be opened for related academic studies and research. We believe all studies and researches will bring more benefits to obesity kids.

Asian Academy for Sports and Fitness Professionals, an Asian-based professional fitness-training institute with 15 year of experience in fitness education, can be one of our partnerships. Their experiences are valuable to our program.

As well, one of the themes of our organization is to encourage obese kids to do more exercises and to develop their hobbies in sports. Therefore, all sport clubs, which provide children training courses, are our potential partners, such as Asia Basketball Academy (Hong Kong) and the South China Football Club. After the children finished our program, we will refer them to some professional sport association and help them to develop their hobbies.

Moreover, we hope to provide nutritional and health knowledge not only to these kids, but also to their family, and so we will regularly send an e-newsletter to the participant’s parents containing updated nutritional and health information. The Central Health Education Unit of the Department of Health of HKSAR is one of our potential partners, which will provide updated and accurate nutritional and health information to us.

Sponsorship Many companies with social conscience like to sponsor non-profit programs that is a benefit to society. Nike and Adidas are good examples which invests a lot of money to promote children and teenage sports worldwide. In those activities, they can increase their social value and establish a strong image in the children's mind. Children fitness training is the main nature of our organization, so our program is good for promoting their images.

We will plan to ask one of them to sponsor $50,000 HKD or sport equipments, sport wears and gears. In return, our program will be named with their brand name, such as “NIKE fun day-camp” or “ Adidas child sport camp”.

The Government of HKSAR highly encourages the development of social enterprises, and a lot of government funds are established for children health and education. Our organization is a social enterprise that focuses on children health and education, so we have potential to be a government funded organization. The Home Affairs Department and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department are our potential supporters. The Home Affair Department can sponsor a room or a space for our office, and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department can provide free or lower rental fee recreation facilities for our program activities.

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Team Plan Our core team will be composed of the following: • Two of the group members will run by 2 of the team members. • 2 psychology/health consultants • Ten fitness trainers from Physical Educational Institution: We hire students from the institution and they will take charge in monitoring and teaching children through activities and games. They will be trained not only to teach but also boost confidence and provide a good exercise to the kids All resources that take on their job should already of some experience working with children in the past. Only those with good references and has cleared a security/police check will be hired.

Although this team will have experience in running the camp, external advisers and mentors are needed to provide advice and help in how to work with specific children. Therefore, we are required to work with the teachers and parents of the children in order to better help the children.

We will also need interns from the Department of Education from local universities to help us with working with the children and carry out normal tasks.

Impact Monitoring and Evaluation A short term and direct way of receiving evaluation of our program will be from anonymous online or paper feedback form. This will let the parents or their children to write us back with their opinions, suggestions or criticisms about anything in our program. This will allow our target customers to immediately evaluate how the program is doing. We will also be monitoring our impact by talking with parents and discussing about any possible changes in lifestyles that they may have since their children has joined this program. We will also choose to survey the parents of the children after 6 months of last participating in the program to see why the children is not participating anymore and gather any criticisms or opinions that they may have about this program. This way, we can continuous monitor our impact and fix any necessary problems.

A long-term method of evaluation will be to allow third party organizations do studies on the reduction of obesity in the near future. This will give us a much clearer picture of whether our program will have the affect that it strives to achieve.

Financial Plan The financial plan for Vibrant Youngster is projected forward for 5 years, with each fiscal year starting in May of each year. Please refer to the appendix for the detailed 5-year projected income statement of our project.

Here is a list of assumptions that we used in projecting our financial:

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Summer term • We will be accepting around 140 participants initially. That is about 1.8% of over-weight children (age 6 – 12) in Hong Kong.

• There will be 2 classes, with 70 children per class. Each session fee is $150.

• We would like to have a 1 to 10, trainer to student ratio, plus two additional trainers in one session. Therefore we will need to hire 9 part-time trainers during the summer. They are paid on a daily basis for $300 per class.

• There will be a four-day, paid training session for the trainers during the summer.

• Initially there will be an investment of $28,500 in the first month for computers, furniture and other office equipment. The computer is depreciated for 4 years using straight-line method.

School term • During the school term, we estimated that 85% of the summer participants to join the school term program. Therefore, there will be around 120 participants during the school term program.

• There will be 2 sessions, one in Saturday morning and one in the afternoon. Class fee is the same as the summer program, which is $150 per class.

• We will be hiring 8 trainers, with a daily rate of $300.

General • There will be a marketing budget of $9,000 per year for marketing materials such as printing brochures and posters. This cost is divided evenly among the 12 months.

• There will be two office staff handling administrative, marketing and operational work.

Each staff is paid on a monthly basis of $10,000 per month.

• We estimate that a 360 square feet office would be sufficient for the staff. For around $9 per square foot, our office rental expense will be $3240 per month.

• Transportation for the children per class is around $1000.

• Bookings for public football fields in Hong Kong are around $160 per hour. Each session runs for about 4 hours, therefore the cost of renting an event space is around $640 per session.

As we have stated in the Partnership section of this document, there are a few ways to increase initial funding and reduce cost of our project. Some of the ways include sponsorship of rooms as office space from government agencies, sponsorship funding from major sporting equipment apparel companies, free event space usage sponsored by the government or universities, partnering with university student bodies to find volunteers to help our as trainers and assistants, etc. We have purposely omitted sponsorship funding and partnership opportunities in our projected income statement, focusing only on the revenue and cost of the project. We believe that, with partnerships and sponsorships, we will be able to increase our net profit by a significant amount. For more details on partnerships, please refer back to the Partnerships section of the document.

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Implementation Plan We have divided our project into three different phases, initial setup, summer term, and school term. This section of the document will identify the details of each phase in chronological order.

Phase 0 Duration: May and June of 2008 During May and June of 2008, our staffs will be focusing on initial setup of the company as well as marketing and promotion activities to get the company going.

Early May • Consult fitness and education experts.

• Contact local schools and their parent-teacher association to promote the program.

• Design posters and pamphlets.

• Contact universities’ student bodies to look for potential volunteers and summer job workers.

• Settle down in the office, purchase computers and office equipment.

Mid May • Distribute promotional brochures to teachers, parents and students. Continue with promotional and marketing activities.

• Look for possible sponsorship and partnership opportunities.

Late May • Interview potential trainers. Finalize the list of trainers for the summer.

• Host health and fitness seminars and educate parents about the issue of childhood obesity.

Look for potential participants at the seminar.

Early June • Finalizing the schedule and the rundown of the program.

• Continue with promotional and marketing activities.

Mid June • Purchase sporting equipment for the activities.

Late June • Host an orientation seminar for our participants. Provide a general breakdown of how the program works. Encourage participants to refer their friends.

• Train all potential trainers.

Phase 1 Duration: July and August of 2008 The sports program starts in mid July until the end of August. While the summer program is running in full speed, the office staff is already working on promotional and marketing activities for the school term program.

Early July • All fees collected from the participants.

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Mid July • The summer program runs in full swing. Two groups, Monday-Thursday group, and Tuesday-Friday group. Trainers work on weekdays except on Wednesdays.

• Survey forms are given to the participating children to get an initial baseline of their interests in food and sports.

Late July to Mid August • The summer program runs without a hitch.

• Office staffs start promotional work on the school-term program by talking to schools and parents.

• Look for potential sponsorships and partnerships for the school-term program.

Late August • Summer term ends.

• Surveys forms are given to the participants. The data form is compared to the baseline data from the beginning of the program to monitor the psychological change and the satisfaction level of the child.

• Host seminars to debrief with parents and children about their improvements in fitness and lifestyles. Promote the school-term program.

Phase 2 Duration: September 2008 to July 2009 The school-term program runs from September to May with classes on Saturdays.

Early September • All fees collected from the participants for the school-term program.

September to December • School-term program runs smoothly.

• Free seminars are hosted. Lecturers are invited to talk about fitness, health and exercise.

These events allow parents and experts to mingle, network and share insight on providing a healthy lifestyle to their child.

February to May • School-term program continues.

• Promotion of the summer program starts.

Risk and Opportunity Risks Risk is inevitable within any business setting. Fortunately we can anticipate some of these risks and minimize the damage to the business when they happen. Here is a list of all the potential risks that we might face during the operations of the project.

Low participation rate Business Plan

There is always the risk of not having enough participants for the summer events. Using our financial projection, we can calculate the minimum number of participants we need for the business to breakeven. If all kinds of marketing effort fail to help us gain minimum amount of participants, then we can reduce the scale of our summer event to lower the marginal cost of the program. Low fixed cost of the business means that most of the cost are marginal, and are proportional to sales. This provides flexibility to our business, allowing us to stay positive even when sales is low.

Competitors Other sports club and organization can start offer similar classes, thus intruding our market share (for details please see the Competitors section of the document). Most of our competitors are currently focusing on all children and are not specified toward kids that are over-weight. We will start the business focusing on over-weight children, consulting fitness and education experts to design a fun and effective program for this targeted group of children. Focusing on this niche, we will be able to establish a strong foothold being known as the experts in weight lose and lifestyle improvement for over-weight children.

Part-time staff Having part-time trainers can be a headache. The workforce of the company is unstable if workers have other primary commitments outside of the company. The sports program can be brought to a halt if more than a few trainers decide to quit their part-time positions. To solve this problem, we can have partnership with Hong Kong Institute of Education, providing their soon-to-be teachers with paid internship positions. We can have highly qualified personnel teaching our youngsters, while we can provide training opportunities for them to put on their rĂŠsumĂŠ. We can also work closely with volunteer associations in all universities in Hong Kong.

Knowing that undergraduate students are very eager to get involved in activities, we can hire them to be assistant trainers, providing them with meaningful volunteering and teaching experience.

Opportunity Business opportunities only come to people who are ready for it. We have anticipated a few opportunities that might come up in the future.

Increase in demand If there is an increase in demand for our program, we can easily expand the program by expanding the school coverage area to other regions in Hong Kong. There will be more trainers to be trained and more data to be processed, but the increase in marginal revenue will provide us with better cash flow to be spent on expanding the program.

Ways to reduce fixed cost and to increase cash flow To minimize the risk of the business, there is a possibility that our staff can work from home using their personal computers. By doing so, we can reduce the initial setup cost to be just the base salary of the two office staff. The office can be setup after a certain of number of

Business Plan

participants are confirmed and fees paid. To increase cash flow, we can have sponsorships from government agencies or sporting apparel companies. Please see Sponsorship section of the document.

Funding Request Based on our financial projection and the implementation timeline, we will start to have positive inflow of cash starting in early July and will have a steady stream of revenue thereafter. The spending in the first two months consists of salary, marketing cost, office rental, office equipment, etc. These are the essential expenditures that can get the company off the ground.

Although partnership opportunities will allow us to save some of these costs by lowering the initial startup cost (i.e. government or university sponsoring office space), we did not include any of those partnerships and sponsorships on our financial plan in order to focus on the cost and revenue balance without external assistance.

Therefore, referring to our financial projection of the first 4 months, in order for our project to stay afloat, we will need an initial investment of $80,000 to support the first two months of operations before we start to collect revenue from our participants in the third month.

With a net income of $76,888 on the first year, the free cash flow of the investment is -$612 (initial investment -$80,000 + net cash flow after tax $79,388) and are unable to repay the initial investment to our investors in the first year. However, since most of the fixed costs will be incurred in the first year, net profit of the company will increase to $103,972 on the second year.

After we receive the course fees for the second summer, we will have sufficient cash flow to repay our initial investors. By making a few assumptions on discount rate, cost growth rate and sales growth rate, we have projected our company’s income statement for five years and estimated that, with the investment of $80,000, the company has a positive net present value of $368,420 today.

Business Plan

Appendix

Business Plan

Multiple Intelligence Teaching Model

Business Plan

Income Statement of Vibrant Youngster for the first 14 months of business May Month Sales Cost Labor (trainer) Labor (office) Rent (office) Rent (activity) Marketing cost Transportation Office Equipment Sporting Equipment Net Profit

June 1

July 2

(20000) (3240)

(20000) (3240)

(750)

(750)

3 252000

August 4

(23990)

June 13

Total 14

(37800) (20000) (3240) (3200) (750) (8000)

(50400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (16000)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

(22400) (20000) (3240) (6400) (750) (8000) (250)

179010

(96790)

226960

(61040)

(61040)

(61040)

154960

(61040)

(61040)

154960

(61040)

(61040)

(28500) (3000) (55490)

September October November December January February March April May 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 288000 216000 216000

972000 0 0 (312200) (280000) (45360) (73600) (10500) (104000) (31000) (3000) 0 112340

Valuation of the project, calculating the Net Present Value with initial investment of $80,000 Year Sales Sponsorship Variable Cost Fixed Cost Labor Rental Rental (Event Space) Depreciation Earnings Before Taxes Taxes Net Profit Add Depreciation Net Cash Flow From Operations Investment Outlays Total Outlays Free Cash Flow Discount Factor Discounted Cash Flow NPV Tax rate Discount Rate Sales Growth Rate Cost Growth Rate Labor Growth Rate Rental Growth Rate

0 972,000 0 (117,000) (31,500) (592,200) (45,360) (73,600) (2,500) 109,840 32,952 76,888 2,500 79,388

1 1,020,600

2 1,071,630

3 1,125,212

4 1,181,472

(122,850)

(128,993)

(135,442)

(142,214)

(621,810) (47,628) (77,280) (2,500) 148,532 44,560 103,972 2,500 106,472

(652,901) (50,009) (81,144) (2,500) 156,084 46,825 109,259 2,500 111,759

(685,546) (52,510) (85,201) (2,500) 164,013 49,204 114,809 2,500 117,309

(719,823) (55,135) (89,461) 0 174,838 52,452 122,387 0 122,387

(80,000) (612) 106,472 111,759 1 0.917431193 0.841679993 (612) 97,681 94,065 368,420 0.3 1.09 1.05 1.05 1.05 1.05

117,309 122,387 0.77218348 0.708425211 90,584 86,702

Assumptions Sales Number of participants (summer)

140

Number of participants (school term)

120

Number of classes Revenue per class per student

12 150

Total

252000

Labor - trainer Number of trainer Number of classes Cost per class Total

9 28 350 88200

Labor - office Person

2

Salary per person

10000

Total

20000

Rental per month (office) Dollar per square foot size total

9 360 3240

Rental (activity) Per hour Number of hours per class Total

160 5 9600

Transportation transportation per 60

$1,000

Number of classes per week

4

Number of weeks

6

Total Marketing Cost per month

Business Plan

$24,000 750