NATIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP WEEK
National Entrepreneurship Week is a chartered initiative by the US Congress to celebrate America’s entrepreneurship environment. It takes place every third week of February every year, and this year it will occur between the 11th and 18th of February. This initiative was formed way back in 2006 and launched officially again in 2017. The initiative aims at uplifting the core values around diversity, inclusion, equity, education, and collaboration beneficial to entrepreneurs. You can check out Scholar for a list of business scholarships if you’re looking for funding to fund your studies.
HISTORY OF NATIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP WEEK
It was until 1723 that the term entrepreneur was coined, even though entrepreneurs have existed all this while people have been free to own businesses. The United States boasts of over 31 million businesses making up a major portion of the country’s economy. However, more than half of these businesses do not see the light of the second year.
For this reason, an initiative was formed to empower these entrepreneurs and support businesses with the knowledge and skills necessary for growing businesses. In 2006, the National Consortium for Entrepreneurship Education took the initiative to work with the 109th Congress alongside the Kauffman Foundation. This led to the creation of the National Entrepreneurship Week, designated for every third week of February annually.
This initiative remained dormant until the Co-Founder of the National Center for Resource Development, Joe Kapp, alongside two other educators in entrepreneurship Amber Ravenscroft and Toi Hershman, revived it in 2017 and ensured its popularity.
While working on a grant in rural Ohio from the Appalachian Regional Commission to educate students in coal-prone communities, they noticed a lack of knowledge about entrepreneurship, available resources, new opportunities, and access to capital markets in the community. Kapp then proposed reviving the National Entrepreneurship Week, which led to the rebirth of the National Entrepreneurship Week 2.0 as NatlEshipWeek.
