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Publications
I Said Yes!
I Said Yes! is about America’s young people and what can be done to better serve them, especially the one in five living below the poverty line. Readers will be introduced to a growing movement that teaches entrepreneurship to young people from low-income communities, called the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship or NFTE (pronounced “nifty”).
NFTE teaches entrepreneurship to at-risk youth, helping young people from low-income communities build life skills and unlock their entrepreneurial creativity. In I Said Yes!, Julie Silard Kantor, executive director of NFTE Washington, D.C., provides a first-person account of the transformative power that NFTE’s mission of teaching entre-preneurship has brought to many young lives. The book includes real life stories of students, teachers and leaders involved with youth entrepreneurship in the school system. Kantor argues to support America’s public schools in adopting the NFTE entrepreneurship program as an accredited class and fundamental life skill for our youth.
More information on I Said Yes! is available at http://www.isaidyes.org.
Successful Entrepreneurial
Endeavors in Rural Regions
Although rural small businesses tend to be largely outnumbered by their urban counterparts, their contribution is vital for the economic success, or failure, of local and state economies. Many federal and state agencies and local rural development councils have expressed interest in analyzing the impact macro- and microeconomic factors have on the growth and profitability of small, rural-based businesses. This analysis is available in
a report titled An Empirical Approach to Characterize Rural Small Business Growth and Profitability from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.
The report examines a number of issues that determine the success of entrepreneurial endeavors in rural regions, and includes case study analysis from six states: Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina and Utah. Conclusions include:
- A positive relationship exists between rural population growth and change in the number of rural small businesses. One of the key issues facing rural communities is how to retain the younger, more educated population.
- The growth rate in the number of rural small businesses is influenced by different factors during periods of different economic conditions.
- Rural policy initiatives are primarily geared toward specific topics or regions. Programs were focused on improving regions that were generally struggling in certain socioeconomic areas, such as high levels of unemployment and poverty.
- Rural areas have difficulty attracting profitable, high-tech businesses, primarily because of a lack of an educated labor force and a lack of infrastructure.
- The current focus in rural small business development involves helping the rural entrepreneur. Future research on rural entrepreneurship is warranted to assess the best ways rural entrepreneurship policy can be implemented to assist rural small businesses.
- Rural development centers and nonprofit organizations are vital components in rural small business development.
- The impact of urban changes on the rural small business environment was mixed.
An Empirical Approach to Characterize Rural Small Business Growth and Profitability is available from http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs271tot.pdf.
Return to Inside this Issue (Vol. 28, No. 4, 2006)
Return to Rural Development News Index
North
Central Regional Center for Rural Development
Iowa State University
107 Curtiss Hall
Ames, IA 50011-1050
(515) 294-8321, (515) 294-3180 fax
For questions, comments or concerns about the NCRCRD website, contact
.
Last updated October 12, 2006 .