Entrepreneur Day Encourages Indian Youth
This event brought entrepreneurship awareness to Native American junior high and high schools.

By Ellen Jensen

Since President Eisenhower started the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) 50 years ago, the agency has implemented many programs to help foster growth in small business. 

One of the latest events the SBA helped support was Native American Entrepreneur Day, which was held on Oct. 20 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP). The purpose of the event was to raise awareness and encourage Indian students to consider a future as entrepreneurs.

Fifty-five BIA schools throughout the country participated in the event, which was targeted for grades seven to 12. The program reached almost 20,000 students and was considered a great success, even for some unintended participants.
“Even though they recommended the program for grades seven to12, some grade schools participated in the event anyway,” said Thelma Stiffarm, Office of Native American Affairs director.

The Curriculum
The SBA developed a partnership with the BIA to provide training and on-site technical assistance to implement the comprehensive event. The SBA also assisted schools in identifying local Indian entrepreneurs, as well as entrepreneurs of any race, to participate by telling their success stories.

The SBA had held two National Youth Entrepreneur Days in the mid 1990s, Stiffarm said. Also, last year, the SBA and SIPI partnered to develop small business training and tools for adults in tribal communities, including teaching business and entrepreneurship to Native American students.

This was the first year the Entrepreneur Day event has made an appearance—this time with a Native American focus—since the original events in the 90s. Organizers were able to take the curriculum from the previous National Youth Entrepreneur Days and combine it with last year’s SIPI training to come up with a core curriculum for Native American youth event.

Students viewed a taped welcome address from SBA Administrator Hector Barreto, Stiffarm and Dave Anderson, assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs. Although there was a base curriculum, teachers were encouraged to modify it to suit their students’ needs. Many of them did so by bringing in local entrepreneurs as guest speakers.
One school set up booths in the multipurpose room that involved presentations. Another teacher reviewed the tape and then talked about business opportunities in the community. And yet another said the students participated in weekly coffee sales and planned two other moneymaking ventures.

Teacher Training
OIEP also made arrangements for entrepreneurial training for teachers before the event. Training was held on October 15 at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) in Albuquerque, N.M. The training was free and was provided by the SBA. Teachers listened to several guest speakers and also received information on the use of lesson plans and classroom tools, the Business CD and a Native American Entrepreneurial Training workbook.

Stiffarm said her office is working with Dave Anderson to see where to go from here.

“We are working with their schools,” she said. “It seems to me like the teachers want to continue teaching an entrepreneurship curriculum in some capacity.”  

Ellen Jensen is managing editor of Kansas City Small Business Monthly magazine.