Kids take a trip around the world as they head to Factiva to work for a day with their parents.
By: Joseph Harvie
April 27 wasn’t a normal school day.
Instead of piling onto buses, and heading to school, many children hit the highway and went off to work with their parents.
That’s because it was the third annual Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, sponsored by the Ms. Foundation for women.
Factiva, a subsidiary of Dow Jones and Reuters, took part in the festivities, and sent 60 children globetrotting around its Ridge Road office interacting with different departments of the business media company.
"One of our goals is to be more community oriented," said Shannon Sullivan, who helped organize the event for Factiva. "One of the community projects we came up with was taking part in the take your kids to work day."
The first stop for the children was an orientation meeting where they were introduced as the newest Factiva employees. The children were divided into teams and sent throughout the office building to different meeting rooms where they learned how the global company operates.
Team FFCFG, which would not reveal what the anagram stands for, first stopped off at the Barcelona Conference Room where they learned about the sales division of the company. They also learned how the euro is used in Spain as money.
The children also heard an audio clip of, Sarah, an employee of Factiva’s Barcelona office. She told the children that the sport of choice in Spain is soccer and that the biggest star in the sport is Britain’s David Beckham, who plays for the Real Madrid team.
From Madrid the children rushed down the hallway, stopping at the conference room designated for the Asian city-state of Singapore, where the children learned about how the company gets its products made available online.
From the Indian Ocean to the River Thames in England, the children scuttered up stairs to the second floor to a conference room designated as London, and learned about currency exchange. The children learned that the American dollar is more valuable than the Australian dollar and the Japanese yen, but less valuable than the euro or British pound.
Elizabeth Mairpratt, 10, of Princeton, said she enjoyed the London stop the best. She said this was the second year she took part in Factiva’s Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day.
"Last year was a lot of fun and this year is a lot better," Elizabeth said. "It was fun learning about the different types of money they have all over the world."
Shrishti Jaganmohan, 10, of Monmouth Junction, said she went to Factiva because she wants to get a job there when she grows up.
"When I grow up I want to be just like my mom," Shrishti said. "Because she works hard and makes lots of money."
Harrison Scott, 10, of Chesterfield, said his favorite part of the day was learning about sales while in the London conference room.
"We got to learn about sales, which is important to the company," Harrision said. "If there weren’t any sales there wouldn’t be any company. I would like to be a salesman. I’d work for any company that has a sales department."

