From The Beginning

He saw rural youth unable to stay in their local communities with any realistic hope of finding good jobs and unlikely to compete successfully for the few good jobs available to them in the nation's metropolitan areas. Trained and socialized to be job applicants, they were not prepared to see, or seize, economic opportunities in their own communities.

Dr. Jonathan P. Sher envisioned "School-based Community Development Corporations" as a way to help rural schools address this negative dynamic in their communities by providing positive opportunities for youth to stay and thrive as job creators. In 1977, Rural Education In America, edited by Dr. Sher, was published, containing a chapter on rural school community development corporations.

Dr. Paul DeLargy, a leader in the community education movement with the Center for Community Education, read the chapter in Rural Education in America and after speaking with Dr. Sher, set out to try to implement the rural school community development corporation (CDC) idea. He received a Youth Work grant from the US Department of Labor and began working in Brooks County, Georgia. A construction company, a feeder pig organization and a child care center were developed after students at the local high school completed a door-to-door survey and identified community needs. The construction company built both the childcare center building and feeder pig operation on the school grounds.

Dr. Sher began work with 10 rural high schools in North Carolina in 1984, and in 1986, incorporated North Carolina (NC) REAL Enterprises. North Carolina students created businesses providing services ranging from screen printing to boat rental to restaurants (including The Way Off Broadway Delicatessen).

As Dr. DeLargy in Georgia and Dr. Sher in North Carolina experimented with what it meant to be REAL – and as rural communities grasped the importance and potential of entrepreneurship – the concept of school-based CDCs evolved into school-incubated enterprises.

In 1989, following years of experimentation with the REAL idea in Georgia and North Carolina, North Carolina REAL Enterprises received a major development grant from the Ford Foundation. The purpose of the grant was to develop the key components – curriculum, evaluation instruments, a professional development program, organizational structure, and outreach materials and capability – required to implement the program successfully and efficiently. The work of the grant was performed by a cross section of staff members from NC REAL, GA REAL, and South Carolina (SC) REAL, a new addition to the REAL family. Outside consultants, most notably Dr. Faith Dunne from the Coalition of Essential Schools, aided this core group.

One of the objectives of the grant period was to form a national organization to develop, promote and coordinate the REAL program nationally. That organization, REAL Enterprises ("national REAL"), was incorporated as a private, nonprofit membership organization in late 1990 and received IRS approval as a 501(c)(3) organization in 1991. The members – state REAL organizations – intended national REAL to serve their common need and serve as the "glue" binding a loosely knit "federation" of state organizations, who would agree on standards without requiring standardization.

National REAL and state REAL organizations have developed essentially along the lines of this intended design. At the state level, REAL has been housed and incubated by entities ranging from a governor's development board to a regional university.

Primarily through the work of staff in the founding state REAL organizations in Georgia and North Carolina, national REAL has, from 1991-1994:

• designed, written and published the REAL Entrepreneurship Curriculum Guide
• designed and implemented comprehensive and successful REAL Institutes each summer that have trained teachers from more than 60 schools nationwide
• assisted in the creation of state REAL organizations in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia
• maintained an informed network of teachers and schools through electronic mail and a newsletter, The REAL Story
• begun to utilize the "evidence development" instruments created under the Ford grant to gather information about REAL students
• maintained communication and coordination between the state REAL organizations through periodic meetings of their staff

In 1994, The Pew Charitable Trusts awarded REAL a grant to undertake a strategic planning process for national REAL and an evaluation of the REAL program nationwide. As a result of this process, in July, 1994 the Board of Directors of national REAL amended the bylaws so that the seven existing state REAL organizations were directly represented on the Board of Directors and filled the vacancies in the "outside" director positions.

Since 1994 to 1998, Alabama, Maine, Pennsylvania, Texas, Upper Peninsula Michigan and Virginia have created state REAL organizations.