Most Dutch kids know or already experienced the so called “Een Heitje voor een karweitje” (bob a job), an old Jewish expression still in use: during their free time children knock at neighbors’ doors and offer themselves to carry out little tasks. They make separate waste collection, wash the car, cut the grass, sweep leaves, and so on. Entrepreneurial kids’ spirit is even supported by the government: the Ministries of Economy, Education, Culture and Science identify in school education the way to develop young entrepreneurship.
Since 1990 the foundation Jong Ondernemen (Young Entrepreneurs), set up with the participation of the biggest Dutch bank, ABN AMRO, together with the Ministry of Economy, organizes entrepreneurship courses in 4000 schools in Netherlands. The foundation helps students to create their own company and economically facilitates them if they don’t have enough funds. It is a Nonprofit Organization whose slogan is “Learning by doing”. Programs are aimed at stimulating entrepreneurial mindset and economic initiative of students who are absorbed in a working perspective and who actively commit themselves to realize an economic project. At the end of the project the foundation carries out a monitoring to discover if a new young entrepreneur is born or if there are guys that assumed an entrepreneurial role in the company.
There are different successful cases of young entrepreneurs. At 15 years old Merijn used to create web sites for friends and acquaintances until when he received the first proposal for 50 US$ per hour and he became a free-lance. Today at the age of 25 he heads his company of 14 employees in the centre of Leiden. Puck Meerdburg, 13 years old from Delft, creates iPhone applications: TafelTraines, to learn multiplication table and Quizzer, a math game to train little kids’ minds. Mida Kwant, who is just 14 years old, invented Inside iOS5, that is used as handbook for smart phone and Apple tablets and that is one of the 25 more downloaded applications for iPhone and iPad. 17 years old Alex Tess Rutten offers professional advice to talented children on how exploiting better their potentials and organizing their studies.
Anyway the way to success has its obstacles because these are minor guys who need their parents’ authorization to become real entrepreneurs and the school is not yet enough flexible to help them developing their talent without risking to fail the school year. This is the case of 17 years old Thij Klerkx, seller and carrier of organic products, who had to repeat the school year for the second time.
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