‘This is a career you prepare yourself in a rigorous way for,’ Spinelli says. As much as learning actual business skills, he says the real value of organizations like NFTE is helping students ’see the world as a set of opportunities, rather than a series of obstacles.’Barnabas Shakur, founder of New York-based Project Re-Generation — and another NFTE award winner — says such organizations don’t make entrepreneurs, but they bring out the zeal for business in people and work with them to harness an existing passion. Shakur, whose group provides education, internships, and volunteer opportunities for young people in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, says the entrepreneurial spirit is innate, so his job is to provide the necessary skills and experience.
‘You have to want to be there, and you have to work hard to be there,’ he says of the kids in his program. The Bed-Stuy native, just 24 himself, attributes his own success and ability to avoid negative pressure to his self-reliance.
And that’s a common theme among many of these teens-turned-proprietors. ‘Anybody can be an entrepreneur,’ says Dashiell of Honeecakes Bakery. ‘As long as you have a passion for it, you can do anything.’ A passion, it seems, that certainly transcends age.
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