Press Releases
Back to Press Releases
Bringing Up Ohio Entrepreneurs
06/30/2008
One has only to read the daily newspapers in Northeast Ohio to feel the pain of today’s workers. The sub-prime mortgage crisis, companies moving out of the region, and plants closing are the headlines week to week. But lost in this flurry of bad news is the undeniable surge of entrepreneurial spirit among young people that is permeating the region.
Creativity…innovation…risk…Students recognize they won’t be following their parents or siblings into rubber and steel factories. Now they are realizing they are the key to turning our rust-belt economy around. And it’s happening on many economic planes.
At the Cleveland Entrepreneurship Preparatory School, kids have raised their standardized reading scores from seven percent to 75 percent and their math scores from 12 percent to 62 percent. What co-founder John Zitzner has discovered is that the street smarts many of these inner-city kids possess can make them good entrepreneurs. The school seeks to show them the connection between classroom skills and the business world. “Entrepreneurship is a way of looking at life: seeing opportunities instead of obstacles, and really believing that anything is possible if you persist and never give up!” Zitzner says.
And Ohio really is the heart of it all…the state is the headquarters of the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education, a national membership organization that provides leadership and advocacy for entrepreneurship education. The Consortium has developed National Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education which are geared toward preparing youth and adults to succeed in an entrepreneurial economy.
In late February 2008, the Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education sponsored the second annual National Entrepreneurship Week, a celebration of the heritage of entrepreneurship in America and opportunities for a new generation. Workshops, seminars, and activities highlighting entrepreneurship were held across the country. Here in Northeast Ohio, an event showcasing youth entrepreneurship – standing room only – was held to promote opportunities for middle and high school students to start their own businesses. Get ready – the third annual National Entrepreneurship Week will take place February 21 – 28, 2009.
Everywhere, more and more people are focusing on the opportunities entrepreneurship can bring to our young people. The Aspen Institute, in partnership with E*TRADE Financial and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), created a Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group in 2007 to develop “a concrete, viable strategy to advance the teaching of entrepreneurship and to prompt public discussion and action on teaching entrepreneurship to increased numbers of high school students from low-income communities.” A national group of high level leaders from the fields of education, entrepreneurship and business, public policy, media and philanthropy are convening annually over a three year period – the most recent meeting was held in May – to develop a systemic initiative to “engage young people in school and provide an experiential context to develop strong academic, entrepreneurial, financial and work skills and motivate students to be productive and engaged in their communities and the economy, and develop success-oriented attitudes of innovation, initiative, intelligent creativity, risk-taking, collaboration, opportunity recognition, and pursuit.”
This summer, 55 Cleveland teens will be putting the Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group’s approach to work through Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Green Corps Urban Youth Program. By weeding, watering and cultivating four gardens in the city they not only learn about growing but also about how to bottle, market and sell their produce. Those Ripe from Downtown food products such as salsa and salad dressing (watch out, Paul Newman!) are already appearing in some specialty supermarkets. The program exposes students to a deeper study of entrepreneurship when they return for a second and third summer. The teaching is based on the NFTE curriculum. How popular is this minimum-wage job? The 55 participants were chosen from 400 applicants!
These are just some of the exciting and innovative activities going on in the field of youth entrepreneurship in our area. The Burton D. Morgan Foundation – Ohio’s only foundation dedicated to strengthening the free enterprise system by investing in organizations and institutions that foster the entrepreneurial spirit – salutes these young entrepreneurs for their creativity, innovation and idealism. We are proud to support these worthwhile organizations and projects. Growing tomorrow’s entrepreneurs is important to all of us.
Deborah D. Hoover
President
The Burton D. Morgan Foundation
Hudson, Ohio
(Published in Crain's Cleveland Business on June 23, 2008)
