Online Vol. 08.2007 

THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$

PBS Documentary Looks at Entrepreneurship Education for At-Risk Youth

By Zach Richter

This is the definition for the word entrepreneur, from the trusty Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English that my grandpa gave me many years ago. It continues to be an important part of my reference library.

I've always been interested in entrepreneurship. As a kid, I built a hot dog stand out of some planks of wood, a baby carriage, a large cooler, and a sterno stove. Instead of joining the local little league, I sold franks, soda and popcorn to them. My Dad took the time to teach me how to keep good records: income and expenses, profit and loss. I was an entrepreneur, though I didn't know it at the time.

I first set out to produce a sixty-minute public television documentary about youth entrepreneurship in early 2002. I contacted several organizations during the research phase, including the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). It's president, Steve Mariotti, and I have crossed paths over the years, so I had a basic understanding of his approach to youth entrepreneurship training.

Before founding NFTE in 1987, Mariotti spent eight years as a junior high teacher in New York City. His specialty was at-risk youth, and he was in the Special Ed program. He noticed that children who were disconnected from their communities would reactivate their interest in school - math, reading and writing, in particular - when they started learning about markets, and about entrepreneurship, and how to create wealth and make money and start a little business.

In past conversations with Mariotti, I asked him why the NFTE program had succeeded the way it has, and he said, "I'm absolutely convinced that inner city children have special abilities in the craft of entrepreneurship. Children who live in a difficult neighborhood, under a lot of stress and ambiguity, develop many of the attributes of the great entrepreneurs. They become mentally strong. They develop initiative. They develop chutzpah. They can sell. They're not afraid of rejection. They become comfortable with risk and ambiguity and stress. All those characteristics are the hallmark of the great small business people of our society."

Mariotti believes that it's very important to start entrepreneurship training as young as possible. The NFTE curriculum is geared for students from ages 11 to 18+. The organization is now considering developing curriculum for students as young as seven. "As a young person starts to train his mind to think entrepreneurially, to look for business opportunities, to think about budgeting and planning, think about marketing and sales, it's incorporated into his very intellectual being," say Mariotti. "I think it's very positive."

By the summer of 2002, I had completed the documentary proposal for "THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$." It was to focus on six organizations and profile student entrepreneurs from those groups: National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, REAL Enterprises, Center for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Entrenuity, Food from the 'Hood, and the C.E.O. Academy. The stories in the documentary would come from many parts of the country: Milwaukee, South Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Chicago; Wise County, Virginia and New York City.

Then came the hardest part–finding foundations interested in underwriting the documentary. While there are numerous foundations that support free enterprise and organizations that teach it, few foundations fund media projects about it. As one consultant to several foundations told me, "Funding a documentary is too abstract." Funding a documentary is a bit of a risk, when compared with other potential investments a foundation makes.

The John Templeton Foundation was willing to take such a risk. I dare say that those who made the decision to fund the documentary were acting entrepreneurially.

I first came across the Templeton Foundation while working on a previous PBS documentary, "Closing the Achievement Gap." The film was about a new charter school located in a low-income neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. The school was Amistad Academy, and it had as part of its mission an emphasis on character education. From my research I learned that the Templeton Foundation had an interest in such educational strategies.

"THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$" is now completed and will be nationally televised by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Thursday, August 30th at 10PM ET. Centered on budding entrepreneurs across the country and the programs created to foster their interest and understanding of the free market, "THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$" tells the tale of underserved youth creating and living their own versions of the American success story.

"A lot of kids would like to start their own business of one kind or another, but they don't know how. Most schools don't teach it," says Clarence Page, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune who is the essayist of "THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$." "The old thinking figured kids were too young to learn about entrepreneurship. The new thinking sees entrepreneurship as a healthy remedy for classroom boredom, restless energies and high dropout rates."

In the course of the documentary, viewers meet young entrepreneurs such as Eric and Derrick, 16-year-old twins in urban Milwaukee, as they promote their thriving lawn-care business; Laima, age 16, who makes sure her web site development company in New York City doesn't sacrifice good design and aesthetics for the latest special effects; and David Lawson of Wise County, Virginia, who began converting six acres of his family property to a vineyard after completing a high school entrepreneurship class several years ago.

Clarence Page concludes at the end of the documentary, "Even if these ambitious young entrepreneurs don't launch their own company right away, they walk away with skills, values and experiences that can help them in other ways for the rest of their lives."

Zach Richter , is Producer and President of the Corporation for Educational Radio and Television (CERT), a New York-based non-profit documentary production company. His national PBS documentaries include "Closing the Achievement Gap" (2004), "Charter Schools That Work" (2000), and the three-part series "The New Urban Renewal: Reclaiming Our Neighborhoods" (1997), "Liberating America's Schools" (1993), and "Black American Conservatism: An Exploration of Ideas" (1992).

Web Sites:
www.certnyc.org
www.pbs.org/closingtheachievementgap

"THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$" will be nationally televised by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Thursday, August 30th at 10 PM ET. Please check local listings for special broadcast times in your area.

Clarence Page with alumni from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Marby Sparkman, Editor
milestoneseditor@templeton.org

Pamela Thompson, Vice President of Communications
pthompson@templeton.org

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