Perk Up Pins

In February 2022, Perkiomen Valley School District Foundation granted Ashley Roche, a vocational studies teacher at Perkiomen Valley High School, two-button machines for her grant, Perk Up Pins. She wanted to use these button machines to add a new vocational opportunity for her low-incident special education students. This vocational opportunity provides new experiences for students to practice and develop a variety of job tasks as well as employable skills.

These skills include:

• Creating promotional materials and commercials
• Running a social media account (follow them on Instagram!)
• Checking order forms for new orders
• Tracking Sales
• Reporting Inventory
• Completing transactions
• Designing new buttons

Once they get rolling, the class is looking to expand their offerings to school events and selling pins to purchase materials, and ensuring this opportunity can continue.

As of March 29, 2022, the Perk Up Pins have:

• Established a new vocational opportunity for our intensive special education classroom
• Trained students how to use the button machine & design software (further work is needed in this area)
• Created a few basic designs to begin selling
• Created an inventory of pre-made designs
• Generated interest on social media
• Created an order form for staff/students including customization options

Their next steps are to finalize their logo, continue building inventory, train more students on using the button maker, showing and teaching students how to use the design software, establish a plan for accepting orders and payments, creating inventory logs, establish a ledger for all transactions and creating a marketing plan including social media posts/stories, flyers, and PVTV commercials.

Perkiomen Valley School District Foundation is proud to sponsor this program and look forward to seeing how this vocational opportunity continues to grow!