"Every nine seconds, a teenager drops out of high school. Imagine if they didn't," observes the publicity material around the new movie documentary
TEN9EIGHT: Shoot for the Moon, directed by Mary Mazzio, which opens today
in scattered cities across the country, including New York City, Atlanta and Washington, DC.
Fewer teenagers might drop out if only they managed to get involved with the
Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), a nonprofit that began in 1987. Since its founding, according to the NFTE website, they've helped over 280,000 young people from low-income communities and have programs in 21 states and 12 countries.
TEN9EIGHT looks at one of the all-too-few safety nets that occasionally catches at-risk kids -- not to mention your other not-necessarily-at-risk but promising young Americans -- and shows them they can lead a life that doesn't involve petty crime or whiling away all their hours watching TV and playing Wii.
Don't expect a dry treatise about NFTE. Instead, this film is a look at the nail-biting, emotional ups and downs that play out every year during the NFTE finals, when teenagers and twentysomethings, many cradling broken dreams from broken homes, descend upon New York City from around the nation and compete in an annual business plan contest, sponsored by NFTE and
Oppenheimer Funds.
Rahfeal Gordon, 26, is just one of those 280,000 young people who have been helped by NFTE, and he is featured in the film as one of the mentors to the 35 kids the film follows -- 35 young entrepreneurs who were chosen out of 24,000 young Americans competing on the local and state levels. (Incidentally, one of the students in the film is
Jessica Cervantes, 19, owner of the Miami, Florida-based Popsy Cakes, who AOL Small Business featured a few months ago.)
Gordon understands full well the power of NFTE and why the organization is so deserving of its own movie. By all rights, Gordon shouldn't be here. If anyone embodies the true entrepreneurial American spirit, it's this guy. His parents separated early in life, due to his father's drug habit. Gordon spent the fourth and fifth grade living in homeless shelters in New York City and New Jersey. His mother eventually left the picture, and his father entered, which didn't work out well. Gordon recalls an abusive father who made him and his two younger brothers live in their basement for several months; they'd come home after school and go straight to the basement, turning on the clothes dryer for heat and using their dogs for warmth.
When he was 15, his father left him at a crack house, saying, "I'll come back for you," only he didn't. Gordon spent the rest of high school living with various relatives until his senior year, when his grandmother took him in. In the midst of all this, he kept running into teachers who gave him encouragement, and somehow he was guided into a program that taught kids how to put together a business plan, and that led him to the NFTE.
Gordon has been involved with them ever since, winning a social entrepreneurship award a couple years ago, and he majored in marketing at Montclair State University. His younger brothers weren't so lucky. One was killed by a gang member; the other is in prison.
"I hope when people see the film," says Gordon, "it helps them keep that spark going within them, so they never give up and understand that dreams come true, and if you want to make a change in your life, it starts with you."
If Gordon sounds like a motivational speaker, hey, good guess. Thanks to NFTE's influences, a network of mentors and apparently something buried deep in his DNA, Gordon started his own company,
RahGor Motivations. In the past 15 months, he has had 65 speaking engagements around the country and even published several books aimed at inspired teenagers.
Meanwhile, Amanda Loyola, 17, is hopeful the movie won't just inspire teenagers, but their parents. "Teenagers often aren't taken very seriously," says Loyola, from her cell phone, between classes at the New York City high school where she's a senior. "But 15-, 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds really have creative ideas and can start a business -- all they need is a boost from older people. They just need to have a little more faith in teenagers, and that's what I hope people get out of it."
Loyola, who did very well at the final competition of NFTE, has started her own business. She now runs
EcoDog Treats LLC, a company that makes vegetarian doggie snacks (spoiler alert: she mentions her exact NFTE placement on her website). She came up with the idea for veggie dog snacks after her beloved Princess died from cancer -- she learned pet food often has red meat in it, which contains chemicals from cattle feed, and that can cause cancer in dogs. So her treats are made primarily of peanut butter, and are vegetarian, organic and chemical free.
Loyola isn't positive she will always be an entrepreneur. She's open to the idea and hopes to continue her business throughout the rest of high school and into college, but she's also considering becoming an environmental engineer. Whatever her future path, the folks at NFTE can consider themselves victorious, because she clearly has embraced the principles of entrepreneurship.
She says what she has learned more than anything -- also due to the influence of her very supportive parents -- is "the importance of responsibility and time management. You really are on your own when you run your own business," says Loyola. "I know my parents will help me out some if I need it, but in the end, how I run my business is really my responsibility."
That wouldn't be a bad philosophy for any entrepreneur to follow. And the way Gordon sees it and
TEN9EIGHT suggests, in a way, we're all entrepreneurs. "When you look at people who work at Fortune 500 companies, and they lose their position, often they end up becoming entrepreneurs, even if just for a while," says Gordon. "Because they have nothing and no one to rely on but themselves."
Geoff Williams is a regular contributor at AOL Small Business and logged in over 10 years writing for Entrepreneur magazine. He is also the co-author of the upcoming book, Living Well with Bad Credit. 
