The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship is training teachers the world over to tell a new generation of low-income entrepreneurs, "Yes, you can."

By: MATT ALDERTON

On Wednesday, April 2, some of the world's brightest entrepreneurs will converge in New York for an evening of small business celebration and inspiration. Among them will be 30 rising small business stars—all of them under 30 years old.

In fact, most will be between 11 and 18, guests of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), which will be hosting for them its 15th Annual Salute to the Entrepreneurial Sprit Awards Dinner. The dinner, which honors aspiring business owners from 14 different countries, includes an awards ceremony at which each of the young entrepreneurs will receive a cash prize toward their college or business start-up costs.

"These are the top kids in the world," says Steve Mariotti, president and founder of NFTE.

They're also the least advantaged, however, as NFTE's students come from the world's lowest-income schools and families. For them, business ownership represents more than economic opportunity; it represents freedom.

Teaching Future Tycoons

Mariotti left his job as a special education teacher in the Bronx and founded NFTE in 1987. His vision: To help every child find a "pathway to prosperity" through entrepreneurship.

"Deep in everybody's subconscious is this part of the brain that's very aware that what you do now, in time X, influences what you do later, in time Y," Mariotti says. "To me, that's what entrepreneurship is. It's being proactive over time so that where you are an hour from now is a little bit better than where you are right now."

Indeed, Mariotti founded NFTE in order to teach aspiring business owners in low-income communities that one's life, like one's company, could be profitable.

To do just that, NFTE takes a three-pronged approach, developing entrepreneurial lesson plans, recruiting and training entrepreneurial teachers, and nurturing its program graduates as they develop into successful business owners.

The heart of NFTE's program is its curriculum, which it administers to low-income middle school, high school and young adult students worldwide via semester- and year-long entrepreneurship courses that can be integrated into regular classes in public schools, or offered extracurricularly via after-school programs and business camps.

Regardless of where, when or how the curriculum is taught, its goal is the same—to teach kids who feel trapped in circumstances that their own ideas and ambitions can set them free.

"Business ownership—talking about how to be proactive in a market, and not just a recipient of the behavior of markets—is an important strategy in developing a rich, deep program for low-income, at-risk kids around the world," Mariotti insists.

Students' Start-up Secrets

According to Mariotti, everyone—young and old—has a little entrepreneur inside them. And after nearly 30 years of bringing out that inner entrepreneur in his students, he has learned a few things about what makes them tick.

Successful students and entrepreneurs alike, Mariotti says, are: