Encouraging Entrepreneurship

The Dakota Foundation seeks opportunities to help the next generation of  talented entrepreneurs strengthen their skills and hone their talents. We work to develop environments in which young entrepreneurs can create, grow and sustain viable businesses and non-profit organizations. Through these activities, we hope to advance systemic change and have a positive influence on the economic futures of communities as well as individuals.

Youth Entrepreneurship Summer Camps Earn New Support

(Grand Forks) Young entrepreneurs in Grand Forks and three other North Dakota communities experienced what it’s like to run their own town and start their own businesses by attending one of four Mini-Society® Summer Camps during May, June and July.

The Dakota Foundation and the UND Center for Innovation Foundation provided grant support for the expansion of entrepreneurship education programs for elementary and middle school students to help grow the next generation of entrepreneurs and civic leaders while helping students realize their potential to startup ventures in the marketplace.

Mini-Society is an effective and popular entrepreneurship education program that increases the level of entrepreneurial thinking, career aspirations and personal resilience of elementary and middle school students. The grant enabled expansion of the Young Entrepreneurs Summer Camps and will support entrepreneurship education programs in the classroom during the regular school year. It is hoped these efforts help secure longer-term public and private funding commitments for youth entrepreneurship education.

The first Mini-Society Summer Camp was held at UND’s Center for Innovation in 2006 under the direction of Barry Striegel, a doctoral student in Teacher Education at UND. During the summer of 2007, three Mini-Society Summer Camps were held at the Center for Innovation, the Ojibwa Indian School in Belcourt and the Strom Center for Entrepreneurship at Dickinson State University. The Dakota Foundation grant allowed the Mini-Society program to expand in 2008, and train additional facilitators. With the $50,000 grant, Barry Striegel expanded the Mini-Society Summer Camp from a one-week to a two-week program and added a new camp location at Ft. Berthold Community College to better serve youth who are educated in predominately Native American communities. Barry also coordinated and evaluated

Barry Striegel

The program reached more than 200 youngsters as well as parents, teachers and youth group leaders who experienced the personal and social benefits of entrepreneurship and learned more about entrepreneurial thinking in hands-on, experienced-based settings. Barry Striegel is a nationally certified Entrepreneurship Educator and a classroom teacher with more than 25 years experience. He has facilitated classroom Mini-Society Entrepreneurship Education Programs for 12 years and trained hundreds of Mini-Society facilitators as a consultant with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The Dakota Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 by Bart and Lynn Holaday to focus their philanthropic efforts on initiatives that foster social entrepreneurship in the states of North Dakota and New Mexico.

The Center for Innovation helps entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers and students launch new technologies, products and ventures, develop business and marketing plans, access talent of universities and secure venture financing. The Center has won five national awards for excellence in innovation and technology entrepreneurship, and the entrepreneur program was ranked in the top ten programs in the nation as #9 out of 900 entrepreneur programs (top 1%).

For more information about the Mini-Society Summer Camps and the classroom entrepreneurship education pilot projects, contact Barry Striegel at 701-741-6985 or via email at b.striegel@und.edu. To contact the Center For Innovation’s Program liaison, call Tom Kenville at 701-777-3132 or send an email to tom@innovators.net.