The Mini-Society® program was brought to the Shenandoah Valley in the mid-1990s by Martha Hopkins, who then was the SVEE-funded teacher consultant working out of the JMU Center for Economic Education.

In the Mini-Society, students develop a self-organizing economic society with the consultative guidance of the teacher, driven by the need to resolve a classroom situation involving the fundamental economic issues of scarcity and allocation of resources. The children begin to identify opportunities in their environment and initiate entrepreneurship ventures to provide goods and services to their fellow citizens.

In 2007 the Shenandoah Valley's own GEM Fair completes its first decade. The tenth annual Global Entrepreneurship Marketplace Fair (GEM) is set for the James Madison University Convocation Center, bringing together hundreds of Shenandoah Valley students for a simulated international market.

Mini-Society is based on the belief that experience is the best teacher. The Mini-Society is an ongoing process of directly experiencing mature entrepreneurship, economic, social, ethical, and political problems, exploring various resolutions and their implications, and instituting solutions and experiencing the consequences of one's decisions.