Entrepreneurship New Zealand Trust (Ahikaa) is a Charitable Trust that holds the exclusive New Zealand license for the internationally-recognised Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) programme. We provide an innovative suite of programmes to a wide range of youth, families/whanau, and communities, with a particular focus on those with low incomes. Graduates benefit from enhanced motivation and goal-setting, the ability to recognise and maximise opportunities, improved educational and personal outcomes, and the skills to develop their own businesses.

Our mission is to empower people and communities through small business and entrepreneurship education and capability building.  We do this primarily through showing them how to recognise, utilise, and develop their resources and providing youth and families with understanding and tools to foster individual, family, and community economic sustainability.

Our empowerment focus complements the importance placed by the World Economic Forum and Global Education Initiative on developing entrepreneurial ecosystems which go on to prepare under-served and socially marginalised groups for the future (World Economic Forum & Global Education Initiative, Switzerland, April 2009, p.10).

AHIKAA

In Maori, Ahikaa means ‘home fires’. This refers to both the people who keep the home fires burning and to the fire within each of us that burns with our creative potential.

Our challenge is to help you recognise the passion for which you burn, and to fan that flame to the point where you are equipped and ready to seize the great opportunities that life presents to you.

Ahikaa programmes use innovative teaching methods designed to inspire and ignite the untapped potentials in our communities