The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Community Engagement programme is providing crucial business experience to hundreds of primary school children in the remote and historic Battlefields of KwaZulu-Natal in a partnership between the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance and local NGO KHULA Education. [end blurb]
What started as a cup of coffee between two friends in a Durban café has set hundreds of school children in some of the most remote, rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) on the road to business success.
Senior lecturer at the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance (SAEF), Dr Michelle Hatch and the Director of KHULA Education, Ms Debbie Heustice have been friends for as long as they can remember. Both are passionate about educating South Africa’s young people and providing them with all the tools they need for future success.
On the day of the coffee catch-up four years ago, Heustice was filling her friend in on a new training programme aimed at teaching business skills to school children in some of the most remote rural areas of South Africa.
‘We were so privileged to be able to introduce the KidsMBA – run under licence from ABE UK – to Grade 7 learners across four rural schools. The programme is about teaching business skills in a very practical manner over 16 weeks. After that the children work in groups for a further four weeks to develop a business proposition before pitching it to a group of local businesspeople,’ Heustice said.
More than 400 young people have graduated from the KidsMBA thus far and KHULA is considered the world’s largest facilitator of the programme.
As part of UKZN’s Community Engagement programme, the SAEF has visited the four schools once a year for three years where they spend two days engaged in experiential learning. ‘The UKZN team is instrumental in helping the groups of Grade 7 learners think through their initial ideas about a product and how to price, produce, market and sell it. While our team can do this, it becomes more real when the children have to discuss their business proposals with the UKZN team,’ Heustice said.
In the next few weeks, Hatch and the UKZN team will once again visit the schools. ‘We will spend about 30 minutes with each group discussing their ideas and helping them shape their business pitch. The learners then have three weeks to refine their pitches, costings and presentations before they present to local businesspeople at what we call a “Shark Tank”.
‘Their pitch is 5-8 minutes. The best presentation at each school is awarded R2 000 in start-up capital and KHULA then works with the winning group at the school to help them realise their business idea ahead of the school’s market day,’ Heustice added.
Hatch said that as much as the young school students benefitted enormously from the interaction, the UKZN team also reaped ‘enormous’ benefits. ‘I got into teaching because I wanted to make a difference. The KidsMBA aligns so well with the SAEF programme and the exposure the learners get to the University team makes them realise that what they want to do, their plans and their dreams, are more than attainable,’ she said.
