Project teaches
Appalachian students how to become entrepreneurs
By Jon Hale
Institute for Rural
Journalism and Community Issues School of Journalism
and Telecommunications
University of Kentucky
MOREHEAD, Ky. – Amid
predictions of continuing migration from Appalachia by its young people,
a new educational program is teaching elementary and middle school
students in Appalachian Kentucky the entrepreneurial skills that can
prepare them for a future in the region, creating jobs for themselves
and others. The E-Discovery
Challenge helps 15 of the Kentucky counties that the Appalachian
Regional Commission classifies as economically distressed. The project,
launched by the Kentucky Entrepreneurial Coaches Institute at the
University of Kentucky, provides students with small seed grants to
start their own small business, which they spend a semester developing.
Students are divided
into teams, which craft a business plan, develop a product and
participate in a year-end sale event. Any profits (income exceeding the
amount of the seed grant) are distributed equally among team members. The students learned
economics, mathematics and other essential business skills, but they say
the biggest lesson they learned was the value of working together and
trading ideas with others. “I learned you have to trust your teammates
and work with them to do the job,” said Morgan County student Josh
Adkins, whose team made T-shirts. Another middle-school
student, Devon Middleton of Elliott County, agrees. “It’s good to get
along with people even if you might not like them,” Middleton said. Middleton said the
program made him and his teammates consider becoming entrepreneurs as
adults, while Adkins aspires to be an investor in new businesses. “I
want to make money from my job and then invest it in something like what
we did” in the program, he said.
Students and teachers
in the program say the most valuable lesson may have been that there is
opportunity in Appalachia. “It helped them see
that they are not necessarily stuck,” Lawrence County teacher Joe
Halfhill said. “If they have a new idea or a twist on an old idea they
don’t have to do what they have always done, what their parents did.” Lawrence County has
coal, but most of the 15 counties in the project do not. “There is
nothing in our area to do unless you go to college and become a nurse or
teacher,” Lewis County teacher Lisa Zornes said. Students “have to leave
for a good job unless they can start their own business.”
The Entrepreneurial
Coaches Institute trained 55 teachers in Bath, Carter, Casey, Clay,
Clinton, Elliott, Hart, Lawrence, Lewis, Monroe, Morgan, Robertson,
Russell, Wayne and Wolfe counties to incorporate the E-Discovery
Challenge’s entrepreneurial curriculum into the classroom. The project
reached nearly 1,700 students and created close to 500 small businesses,
Institute Director Ron Hustedde said. All the counties in the
program are rural. Hustedde said 18 percent of rural Americans already
have their own business, and that number is projected to increase. He is
seeking funding to continue the program through next year and expand it
to other Appalachian counties. Of the 78 economically distressed
counties in Appalachia, 40 are in Kentucky.
“This process has
sparked creativity and imagination in the students and teachers alike
with a new hope for the possibilities for the future,” said Melony Furby
Denham, the E-Discovery Challenge project manager. Student products ranged
from bottle-cap necklaces to pop-tab bracelets to Gummy Bear popsicles
and super-hero coloring books. Many of the student teams finished the
semester with a profit, but some were faced with a negative return,
which teachers said taught valuable business lessons. Most of the educators
at a project wrap-up meeting at Morehead in July said they were
surprised by how much thought and effort the students put into their
enterprises. “The kids could be
creative, and they could do more than we had realized,” Lawrence County
teacher Alicia Robinette said. “We learned we could push them further
than we thought.” Some teachers in the
program were reluctant to say that entrepreneurial education should be
required for middle school students, but all agreed on the benefits of
the hands-on nature of the E-Discovery Challenge.
“Instead of giving back
a definition [of social studies terms] they can use their own life
experience to define these terms,” Halfhill said. “When they can do
that, they have learned it.” The program can “change
the way people think about integrating social sciences with math,
science, etc.,” Hustedde said. Still, the most
valuable lesson may have been pointing students’ eyes toward the future,
teachers said. “We recently lost a
factory in our community and a lot of people lost their jobs,” Bath
County teacher Jennifer Blount said, adding that one of the best
conversations she had with her students during the program came when
they discussed what small businesses could do for their area. “We talked
more in detail about rural issues. They are concerned about the future
of our community.”
For more about the
E-Discovery Challenge contact Melony Furby Denham at
melony.denham@uky.edu.
Jon Hale is a
native of Floyd County, Ky., and a graduate assistant at the Institute
for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based in the School of
Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. |