VOA慢速英语-EXPLORATIONS - Entrepreneurs Change the World

VOICE ONE:

I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Shirley Griffith with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we tell about entrepreneurs² and the problems they face starting businesses around the world.

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VOICE ONE:
　
Bill Gates

"Entrepreneur¹" is a French word that means someone who does something. An entrepreneur is someone who attempts to organize resources in new and more valuable ways and accepts full responsibility for the result.

Entrepreneurs bring a new product, service or idea to market. For more than a century, entrepreneurs have changed the world. American Bill Gates is perhaps the world's best-known entrepreneur. He did not invent personal computers. But his operating system made computers easy to use. It also brought the new technology to millions of people around the world.

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Wendell Cochran is a journalism³ professor at American University in Washington, D.C. He says the Internet is a very helpful tool for entrepreneurs. That is because it provides information to anyone, anywhere.

Craig Newmark is an example of another American entrepreneur. Thirteen years ago, Mister Newmark created an Internet message service for the investment company where he worked. Today, his web site, Craig's List, has users in more than five hundred fifty hundred cities and fifty countries. They can buy and sell goods, find a job or a place to live.

VOICE ONE:

Modern technology has made it easier for entrepreneurs around the world to succeed. However, they still have problems getting money to start businesses and deal with government restrictions⁴ in many countries. In Venezuela, for example, monetary⁵ exchange controls and a leadership hostile to free markets make it difficult to do business. Santiago Alvarez is a businessman in Caracas. He says it is difficult to get all the permits necessary to start a business.
　
Sunil Mittal

In India, Sunil Mittal overcame different problems to build a successful telecommunications company. He says the end of central economic planning by the country's government helped his company succeed.

SUNIL MITTAL: "With thirty, thirty-five million dollars that I could access, we went on to built India's second largest telecom company."

Today, Bharti Airtel has thirty thousand employees. The Bharti Group has become India's second largest corporation.

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Brent Goldfarb is a business professor at the University of Maryland. He says all kinds of people work to become entrepreneurs. However, he says most entrepreneurs do not get rich. Most earn less than if they were working for someone else. That was true for Pakistani entrepreneur Ashar Hafeez. He opened his first Tandoori restaurant in Islamabad in nineteen ninety-three. He has advice for other entrepreneurs: "You have to work very hard. And you cannot do it alone. You have to have a very good team with you."

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In Iraqi Kurdistan, Suhela Kakil Raza is a mother of four. She began making women's clothes about a year ago. But there were problems finding a place to open her store in her city, Irbil. She had to find an area in Irbil where men did not go. This would permit Sunni Muslim women to come out and buy her products. Now, Suhela Kakil Raza has four employees and she wants to expand. She says she dreams of having a factory. She would also like to operate a school to train her female workers.

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In South Africa, Mthuli Ncube is the director of the entrepreneurship⁶ institute at the University of the Vitwatersrand. He says the African continent does not have enough entrepreneurs who are prepared to take risks. However, the most successful black entrepreneur in South Africa, Richard Maponya, has been taking risks for a long time to build successful businesses. Now in his eighties, Mister Maponya recently opened a huge shopping center in Soweto, near the city of Johannesburg.

Donald Trump⁷ is one of America's most successful property developers. He says entrepreneurs must think big and take action. He says they also must study new information, learn to negotiate⁸ and enjoy competition.

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VOICE ONE:
　
Muhammad Yunus

In many developing countries, small loans are known as micro-credit or micro-financing⁹. They have helped entrepreneurs get the money they need to start a business. Special attention is now being given to female entrepreneurs. They have had to beat many cultural barriers to get financing.

In Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank lends small amounts of money, mainly to women. And almost all of these small business loans are repaid¹⁰. Grameen was the first bank in the developing world to lend money to poor people who wanted to be entrepreneurs. Muhammad Yunus started the Grameen Bank. He and the bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand six.

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Grameen's micro-financing has expanded the idea of entrepreneurship to many people. For them, entrepreneurship is about raising chickens and cows or making clothes to help feed their families. For example, Margaret Okoth sells food at a market in Nairobi, Kenya. She is using low-interest micro-loans from an organization in her village.
　
Margaret Okoth

MARGARET OKOTH: "[The cooperative] has recently increased its limit so that you can borrow eighty thousand [shillings]. And if you take out that big a loan you'll really see your business grow."

Margaret Okoth's area at the market was destroyed in violence after the Kenyan election. But loans permitted her to rebuild. The money also helped her balance her business with her other job, as a wife and mother of twelve children.

VOICE ONE:

Now, large lenders like the World Bank are supporting the ideas of the Grameen Bank in discussions with developing countries. Dahlia Khalifa is a business expert at the World Bank's International Finance¹¹ Corporation. She says getting the necessary financing is the biggest barrier for female entrepreneurs in African countries. But she says discrimination against women goes even further. In many places, women are not permitted to sign an agreement or to represent themselves in court.

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Many countries have policies that make it hard for entrepreneurs to start businesses. In Russia, for example, people often have to make secret payments to government officials to influence their decisions on business permits. Other entrepreneurs say they have to deal with government processes that are slow and difficult.

Alexei Protsky has a chemical company. He says he has to deal with unnecessary rules and reporting requirements. He says dealing¹² with too much paperwork means a loss of time and reduction in productivity¹³ for his company.

VOICE ONE:

Every year, the World Bank rates countries on the ease of starting a business. The Bank examines the processes involved in getting permits, getting credit, paying taxes and enforcing agreements. World Bank specialist Dahlia Khalifa says some governments are reforming and changing their business laws. The World Bank said Egypt was the top reformer last year, followed by Croatia, Ghana, Macedonia and Georgia. The bank says Egypt reduced the amount of money needed to start a business. Egypt also eased rules that used to delay building permits.

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VOICE TWO:

Schools and universities around the world are teaching entrepreneurship. For example, in China and India, thousands of people are attending graduate schools of business where entrepreneurship is taught.

Such programs in the developing world are influenced by those in the United States. At some American universities, business students are required to start a business before they complete their study program.

Elaine Allen teaches entrepreneurship at Babson College in Boston, Massachusetts. She says she meets with groups of college students before they learn about financial rules. The groups are given two thousand dollars and told to start a business.

At the end of the year, she says, almost all of them make a profit. Often the profits are as much as fifty or sixty thousand dollars. They donate this money to non-profit organizations. These students are on their way to becoming entrepreneurs of the future.

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VOICE ONE:

This program was written by Barry Wood and adapted by Shelley Gollust. Our producer was Mario Ritter. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Barbara Klein. You can download audio and read scripts on our Web site, voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.

 

1 entrepreneur   

n.企业家，主办人

参考例句：

• The entrepreneur has become a news figure.这位企业家变成了新闻人物。
• The entrepreneur takes business risks in the hope of making a profit.企业家为追求利润而冒险。

2 entrepreneurs   

企业家( entrepreneur的名词复数 )； 主办人

参考例句：

• He is one of the entrepreneurs of the concert. 他是这场音乐会的主办人之一。
• Entrepreneurs are free to develop their businesses. 企业家们可以任意发展自己的企业。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件

3 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

4 restrictions   

约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则）

参考例句：

• I found the restrictions irksome. 我对那些限制感到很烦。
• a snaggle of restrictions 杂乱无章的种种限制

5 monetary   

adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的

参考例句：

• The monetary system of some countries used to be based on gold.过去有些国家的货币制度是金本位制的。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

6 entrepreneurship   

企业家身份

参考例句：

• Spawr indeed personified American ingenuity, self-reliance, initiative and entrepreneurship. 斯帕尔看不上机构重叠和清规戒律，表现出美国人的机敏，有着独立、首创精神和企业家的风度。
• He provides evidence that n-achievement is highly correlated with entrepreneurship. 他提供的材料表明“n--成就”与企业家精神高度相关。

7 trump   

n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭

参考例句：

• He was never able to trump up the courage to have a showdown.他始终鼓不起勇气摊牌。
• The coach saved his star player for a trump card.教练保留他的明星选手，作为他的王牌。

8 negotiate   

v.洽谈，协商，谈判，顺利通过，成功越过

参考例句：

• I'll negotiate with their coach on the date of the match.我将与他们的教练磋商比赛的日期问题。
• I managed to negotiate successfully with the authorities.我设法同当局进行了成功的协商。

9 financing   

n.筹措资金

参考例句：

• The main source of our outside financing is bank loan. 我们向外筹措资金的主要渠道是银行贷款。
• They live in a symbiosis with governments that they are financing. 他们与他们服务的政府互利共存。

10 repaid   

v. 偿还, 报答 vbl. 偿还, 报答

参考例句：

• The business quickly repaid the initial outlay on advertising. 这家公司很快偿付了初期的广告费。
• She doesn't intend to be repaid to her kindness. 她不图回报她的好心。

11 finance   

n.财务管理，财政，金融，财源，资金

参考例句：

• She is an expert in finance.她是一名财政专家。
• A finance house made a bid to buy up the entire company.一家信贷公司出价买下了整个公司。

12 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

13 productivity   

n.生产力，生产率，多产

参考例句：

• Farmers are introducing in novations which increase the productivity.农民们正引进提高生产力的新方法。
• The workers try to put up productivity.工人设法提高生产率。