Today the Chamber is announcing a $1 million expansion of its K-12, college, and post-graduate entrepreneurship education efforts. These programs will bolster the private sector component of the White House’s new “Startup America” initiative, a national campaign to promote entrepreneurship that was launched today.

The Chamber’s Campaign for Free Enterprise and the National Chamber Foundation will invest more than $1 million during 2011 by forming new partnerships with Students in Free Enterprise and the Kairos Society and expanding existing partnerships with the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour and Junior Achievement.  This includes:

• Students in Free Enterprise – targeting 50 Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) campuses (one per state) to work with local chambers of commerce to create projects promoting entrepreneurship, culminating in an American Free Enterprise Impact Report.
   
• Kairos Society – sponsoring the 50 most innovative student startups, to be announced in February at the Kairos Global Summit, to give a voice to the world’s best and brightest young entrepreneurs in Washington, D.C. so they can more easily navigate the hurdles of getting a business up and running.
   
• Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour – reaching more than 50 college campuses to communicate the benefits of free enterprise and inspire the nation’s next generation of entrepreneurs.
   
• Junior Achievement Partnership – commissioning a nationwide survey—the first of its kind—to measure high school students’ knowledge of the free enterprise system.

We're excited about this initiative. Stan Anderson, managing director for the Chamber’s Campaign for Free Enterprise, attended today’s launch event at the White House. Afterward he had this to say:

All of America’s businesses started as an idea--an idea brought to reality by hard working entrepreneurs. These are the dreamers and the innovators that are the foundation of our economy.  This campaign will help the innovators, thinkers, and doers of tomorrow continue building the American Dream.