Laima Tazmin's fascination with computers began when she was just seven years old, when she stumbled upon her older brother's book on Web development. Now, Tazmin is the founder and CEO of LAVT, a company that offers Web site design services to clients in various industries.

Tazmin, who lives in New York City, is 13 years old.

"I like to look around me, at buildings and ads on the street, and I look at the way they make their designs," she says. "I try to incorporate that into my Web designs."

Tazmin's company is just one of many to sprout from an idea that formed in the mind of Steve Mariotti 16 years ago. At the time, Mariotti was a high school teacher in New York City. As an anti-dropout specialist, Mariotti used business and wealth creation skills to keep kids in school. "I noticed that children that were in poverty really liked to talk about money and about business and also were very good at it, that they had street smarts," he says. "So I began to think that there should be a very focused, organized effort to help low-income children get involved in thinking about starting their own small businesses."

"A Mini-MBA Class"
That effort became the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a nonprofit organization founded by Mariotti in 1987. Headquartered in New York City, NFTE (pronounced "nifty") teaches young people between the ages of 11 and 18 the principles of entrepreneurship and business planning.

NFTE students review each other's business plans in preparation for the Business Plan Competition.

"They really call it a mini-MBA class for the students, because they learn a lot of concepts," says Valerie Wheeler, a Certified Entrepreneurship Teacher (CET) at Wilson Senior High School in Washington, DC. "I've had a lot of parents tell me that they were amazed at what their students were doing and they wish they'd had a class like this when they were in high school."

Wheeler teaches Wilson's Entrepreneurship class, a course that uses NFTE's textbook and core curriculum to introduce high-schoolers to business concepts. Students learn how to start and operate their own businesses, a process that includes market research, cost analysis and development of a comprehensive business plan. Once they've honed their business plans, students go head-to-head for spots in regional and national contests, where they present their ideas in front of industry professionals. Winners receive awards of as much as $1,000.

"NFTE helped me raise money for my business through competitions," says Tazmin, who grossed $5,000 last year in awards and business profits. Tazmin's success earned her media coverage that attracted a number of clients, including a large telecommunications company.

NFTE students review the critical elements of marketing needed to satisfy customer needs.

From Baking Cakes to Coaching Cheerleaders
Business plans come in a myriad of forms, from selling tennis shoes to baking cakes to offering cheerleading classes. Most students enlist hobbies or interests when it comes to thinking up a proposal, and some of them can be kind of unusual.

"We had a girl about three years ago who wanted to start a mortuary," says Shelly Chenoweth, the executive director for Youth Entrepreneurs of Kansas, a Midwest NFTE office. "Her aunt owned a mortuary, and she saw what a great service her aunt was providing. Her plan was to go to mortuary school, and then her aunt had agreed that she could work for her for ten years, and then she was going to borrow a quarter million dollars and buy her own."

One student made a business of importing natural shampoo bars from Mexico. Another started an Internet-based advertising service for hair salon owners in Philadelphia. One young man already had a lawn-mowing business when he began the program, and NFTE helped him improve his record keeping and organization. By the time he graduated from high school, he was making about $20,000 a year from the enterprise. When he left for college, he sold the business to his younger sister.

NFTE students on Wall Street visiting the New York Stock Exchange.

"A lot of schools have students thinking in terms of how they're going to be an employee, a cog in a wheel," says Angela Davis, the national director of NFTE's alumni services. "We get them to think about how they can take charge of their own lives and control their own destiny."

Students can also get a taste of free enterprise at NFTE's "BizCamps," intensive summer programs that offer kids a crash course in business planning. For these camps, NFTE often partners with major universities such as Yale, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, bringing young people onto college campuses for one to three weeks of entrepreneurship training.

NFTE's Own Business Plan
Since its inception 16 years ago, NFTE has worked with more than 65,000 young people in 14 countries and trained more than 2,700 teachers and youth workers, 647 of them last year. Each CET attends a 3- to 5-day training program that prepares them to teach business concepts, such as return on investment, supply and demand and finance. "It was very rigorous—I had to do what my students were doing," says Wheeler, who attended a week-long program at Babson College.

Calculating Return on Investment (ROI) is a critical learning point for NFTE students.

The group's goal is to reach 35,000 children per year by 2005, and so far they're right on track. "We're about halfway there," Mariotti says, adding, "We're at about 17,000 kids." Goals for the next two years include building NFTE's financial base, developing strong worldwide boards and partnering with more large youth agencies like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. "That way we can go to scale by leveraging what we're good at, and by helping other organizations," Mariotti says. "That's kind of our strategy."

As a nonprofit, NFTE receives most of its $6.7 million annual budget via contributions and grants, although its biggest fundraiser is an annual gala held each spring in New York City's Marriott Marquis hotel. The event, which draws about 1,000 people and raises $900,000 to $1.2 million each year, includes a business plan competition and awards ceremony for young people like Tazmin.

"My business idea was to provide programming to teens and adults," says Tazmin, who was 11 when she learned about NFTE. "My computer teacher liked my idea and told me I should participate in the business plan competition." Tazmin walked away with first place that year, and in 2002 she was named one of NFTE's Young Entrepreneurs of the Year.

"I didn't know that I could start a business at a young age—I just knew that I wanted to be a computer programmer," Tazmin says. "NFTE showed me that I could start my own business and be my own boss. It helped me a lot. I definitely want to keep the business going."

Resources:

• For more information about Laima Tazmin's business, visit her Web site
• Visit NFTE's Web site for more information about the organization.
  

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Kate Ashford is a freelance writer in Alexandria, Va.