Miniature metropolis

On Tuesday morning, Brian Williams set three plates of chocolate chip cookies on the table at his bakery. As he began to separate the warm cookies into plastic bags, potential customers inquired about their cost.

“A hundred dollars for a cookie, 30 bucks for a cup of juice,” he told them.

Despite the smallness of the cookies, including some that were just a pile of crumbs because they had been disturbed too soon after coming out of the oven, the customers reached for their money.

Brian shoved each $100 into a plastic sandwich bag crammed with other fake bills. Yet, despite his apparent success, Brian’s bakery will close Friday — when camp is over, and the 8-year-old heads back to school.

Brian’s bakery has been a favorite in the Columbia Parks and Recreation’s STARS Camp, in which 6- to 14-year-old campers create their own city, flag, currency and form of government. STARS — Seeking Traditions, Arts and Rights of Passage — is meant to reach beyond this summer; organizers hope to instill in children, most of whom are black, a sense of pride about their heritage and equip them to succeed in life and become successful citizens, said Bill Thompson, a recreation specialist with the department.

“We were trying to create programs that would help teach life skills, because, you know, you have a lot of kids whose parents are busy, a lot of single-parent households and things like that,” Thompson said. “We tried to create a program that would develop a positive sense of self, a higher self-esteem, peer-resistance skills, where they work to be more of an individual and hopefully a positive force in society.”

The camp centers around two areas. The first is an exploration of black heritage and the seven principles associated with Kwanzaa, a December holiday based on African festivals. The seven principles are unity, purpose, self-determination, cooperative economics, responsibility, faith and creativity. Each week, the camp focuses on one principle, and activities such as field trips and craft projects reinforce it. For example, one class traveled to the state Capitol and looked at artwork while learning about creativity.

Campers learn about blacks who contributed to different areas of society, including people from Boone County.

“I tell them this is your history that you are not going to get in school,” said Shamon Williams, one of the camp teachers and Brian the baker’s mother. “They will get the five main people, but it’s important for them to know about local people because there’s a lot of local people who had success. If they can see success in them, then they can see how to accomplish their goals.”

Heritage and culture lessons are valuable at a young age so all children can see where their place in society may be, said Bert Schulte, deputy commissioner with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“It’s important for everyone to have a sense of their history, the heroes and the people who helped shape what we have in society today,” Schulte said. “It gives them a sense of identity and a sense of possibility that they may be able to shape the world as well.”

In addition to learning about their heritage, the campers develop an original society through a program called “Mini-Society.” Available through the Kaufman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, the program has been used in 43 states. In it, children learn business principles and entrepreneurship. They must manage their business as well as deal with problems and conflict, all without much help from the adult leaders.

“We may suggest, ‘How about a town hall meeting?’” Thompson said. “That allows everyone to get together and talk about the problem and offer possible solutions in open discussion.”

Businesses created this summer include food and clothing stores, a graphic design office and what one boy called a “dayclub,” complete with music and strobe lights.

The Mini-Society program has been used in some Kansas City after-school programs, in which some students were able to market and sell their salsa to the public.

“The salsa was good, so all the kids bought it and then all the instructors in the program bought it, and then other people (outside of the program) started buying it,” Thompson said. “These kids created a salsa business while they were still in school, and this program that we are using helped them do that.”

The program costs $35 for the summer, and organizers work to keep costs low so that any child, regardless of income level, can learn the lessons taught through the camp. Instructors make efforts to use free or low-cost services for activities, such as borrowing books from the library for lessons on historical figures and shopping at low-cost stores for Mini-Society supplies. Also, students eat lunch every day at Lunch in the Park, a program that provides free lunches to children through the Columbia/Boone County Health Department and Voluntary Action Center.

At the end of camp, the fake society money will be taken out of circulation at an event in which students can purchase items, and adult leaders can say goodbye to campers.

“The hardest part is you are going to have some kids who have everything and some kids who have nothing,” Thompson said. “So when we get to the end of this program, we try to go buy items like little CD players, little tape players, shirts and things like that, that the kids would like to buy. Then we have an auction at the end with products that the kids can buy with the money they earned in their society.”