Business Week: Another way to come at the question is to ask: Can entrepreneurship even be taught?
Diddy: I think especially with kids from the inner city, they’re natural-born entrepreneurs, because they have to figure out how to survive. So they have it in their DNA. An organization like this can show them that they have it inside of them and can show them how to relate what they’re learning in school to their street smarts and street savvy.
Full Interview: Business Week
Mission
The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s mission is to provide programs that inspire young people from low-income communities to stay in school, to recognize business opportunities and to plan for successful futures.
History
Founded in New York City in 1987 by Steve Mariotti, a former entrepreneur turned high school math teacher in the South Bronx, NFTE began as a program to prevent dropouts and improve academic performance among students who were at risk of failing or quitting school.Combining his business background with his desire to teach at-risk students, Steve discovered that when young people from low-income communities are given the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship, their innate “street smarts” can easily develop into “academic smarts” and “business smarts.” Through entrepreneurship, young people discover that what they are learning in the classroom is relevant to the real world.
To date, NFTE has worked with more than 500,000 young people from low-income communities in programs across the U.S. and around the world.
More on the NFTE
