Setting up camp: forget the knot-tying merit badge—this camp teaches kids skills they'll use in business

Entrepreneur, June, 2002 by Nichole L. Torres

YOUNG PEOPLE NEED Direction. And if Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and YoungBiz have anything to do with it, the next generation will receive direction toward being entrepreneurs. YoungBiz, a youth educational organization, and SIFE have joined forces to create educational camps and workshops to teach children 11 to 17 about business, entrepreneurship, investing and personal finance.

"Bringing college students interested in teaching free enterprise together with [our] curriculum just seemed like a perfect fit," says Misty Elliott, executive vice president of YoungBiz. "There's a lot of synergy with what we can accomplish together."

At these nationwide camps, SIFE's college-age students will teach the younger pupils the YoungBiz curriculum, including skills like writing a business plan and creating an investment portfolio. "It's crazy that you go through college and they don't teach you how to start and run a business," says Elliott. "When it's small business that fuels the economy, just imagine what would happen if we had a really educated generation of young entrepreneurs that became the small-business owners of tomorrow."

Camps have already been rolled out in Atlanta; Houston; New York; Orlando, Florida; San Francisco; and Washington, DC. To see where SIFE and YoungBiz are headed next, check out www.sife.org and www.youngbiz.com.