Teaching Youth at Risk to be entrepreneurs

This year we are developing an entrepreneurial program between Melbourne Business School and The Carnegie School for senior students at Carnegie School. The program would be established in such as way as to ensure it is formally recognised in the education curriculum.

The importance of promoting youth entrepreneurship (particularly amongst youth at risk) lies in the following:

• Creating employment opportunities for both the self-employed youth and other young people.
• Bringing back the alienated and marginalized youth into the economic mainstream.
• Helping address some of the socio-psychological problems and delinquency that arise from joblessness.
• Promoting innovation and resilience in youth.
• Promoting the revitalization of the local community.
• Young entrepreneurs may be particularly responsive to new economic opportunities and trends.
• Give young people, especially marginalized youth, a sense of meaning and belonging, and
• Enterprise helps young women and men develop new skills and experiences that can be applied to many other challenges in life.

This concept of providing entrepreneurship education school level is not unique. The best example is in New York – see the example below.

MBS / Carnegie Entrepreneurship Program Overall Concept

Many youth at risk are smart, resourceful individuals with the capacity to quickly adapt to their environment. Being an entrepreneur and running a business requires the same tenacity. We all know of examples where people have become very successful at business without going through the traditional education system.

The MBS / Carnegie Entrepreneur Program would seek to instil the practical application of enterprising qualities, such as initiative, innovation, creativity, and risk-taking into the work environment (either in self-employment or employment in small start-up firms), using the appropriate skills necessary for success in that environment and culture.

As well as building a tool kit for launching a successful business, the program should allows students to appreciate their own capacity for innovation, risk-taking and decision-making, handling conflicts and other entrepreneurial attitudes and values.

Key aspects of the program

1. The MBS and Carnegie School would formally sign an MOU comprising of expectations and undertakings by each partner and how costs (if any would be covered).
2. MBS and Carnegie School to obtain formal recognition by the appropriate State or Federal Education Department or regulatory authority.
3. The Entrepreneurial program would be open to senior level students who apply for the program in the year prior to commencement.
4. It would mirror the MBA program and involve individual and team work over a set number of compulsory subjects and a major project.
5. Students would get to hear from and interact with senior business and community people throughout the program to learn from their experiences and anecdotes about how they became successful.
6. Some course work could be held at the Melbourne Business School and some off-site at a business – the key is as much experiential learning as formal tuition.
7. Those students who go onto be successful would be asked to carry on their association with MBS and the Carnegie School by working with future students.

Objectives

The objectives of the program are to:

• Build a two-year formally recognised program of study focused on entrepreneurship for senior students who attend the Carnegie School.
• Develop a recognised certificate that can be accredited towards the student’s attendance at University or another higher level of education.
• Produce students who recognise their own true potential to be successful business people in their own right.
• Establish a strong and enduring community partnership between the Melbourne Business School and the Carnegie School, who both share a passion for education.