Carolina Haydaz, a 9-year-old Argentine girl, was the protagonist of a story that for some is early entrepreneurship and, for others, child exploitation.
It occurred in the province of Misiones, in the extreme northeast of Argentina, on the border with Brazil,
There, a 9-year-old student made headlines after the school discovered that had installed a small shop for sweets, juices, soft drinks and snacks to sell to their peers during breaks.
With the business, which lasted two weeks, he collected up to 5,000 Argentine pesos per day, about 45 dollars at the official exchange rate.
Everything happened, according to the local media TN, at School 62 “Luis Piedra Buena” in the missionary town of Alem.
The “discovery” was made by the teachers, who detected that the student sold the products to her classmates who ordered them the day before.
The girl’s father, Fredy Haydaz, said that although some media spoke of “child exploitation”, that was not true.
“Nothing to see, she doesn’t do it because she needs to, she takes it as a game and she likes to do it”, said.
Haydaz is the owner of a small food transport company and he was the one who provided Carolina with the products that the small “entrepreneur” later sold at school.
The girl entrepreneur can no longer sell at school
The father says that the idea came from the girl when the internal food store was suspended at school due to the pandemic.
“I explained to him that in the classes he could not sell or deliver because there he had to pay attention to the teachers and study. Carolina sold at breaks and she did it for a couple of weeks”, she pointed out.
The father went to the school and explained the situation, said that it was a game and that the girl was always an entrepreneur.
The directors of the school, meanwhile, told him that he could not make a profit within the educational establishment.
“They explained the situation to me. I told them that for her it is fun, that He even gave his friends a current account and that a colleague acted as a cashier and another took the orders”, the father recounted.
The man told the Argentine media that he always teaches his daughter how his business is, so that she learns something else outside of school.
He said that on Saturdays, spends an hour teaching him “theory and practice”, such as making order notes, checks, how products are ordered or the value of things.
“I gave him the products and explained how much he had to return to me to cover the cost. But it was not something to make a profit, but to learn the business”, explained the merchant, clarifying that he understands the position of the teachers.
“How did Carolina react?” They asked. “He said that he is going to put a blanket outside and that he is going to sell the same things, but at the school gate,” the father said.
The principal of the school also spoke.
He said that it cannot be that “every parent lets their child sell whatever they want here, what is the school going to be like? A fair?”.
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