Young entrepreneurs mean business

What do grade 10 and 11 high school pupils know about starting up and closing down a business? Everything!

Forty-two learners from seven Durban South Basin schools (Ganges High, Merebank High, Wentworth Secondary, Fairvale Secondary, Umbilo Secondary, PR Pather and Enaleni High School) who are participating in the Engen sponsored Junior Achievers programme hope to gain enough business savvy to compete with any small business in the area.

To achieve this, the learners have been visiting the Refinery on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for three hours over 11 weeks to participate in the programme administered by the Junior Achievers of South Africa (JASA) organisation.

The learners have been learning best practices of running a business and the associated entrepreneurial skills. Each group is required to start up a fully functional company and produce an item to be marketed and sold for profit.

At the end of the course the learners will each receive an internationally recognised certificate of participation and qualify to write the Junior Achievers Cambridge exam.

Earlier this year, six of the learners who attended the programme, received excellent results. Prunelle Moonsamy of Merebank Secondary School received the Joint Second Candidate in South Africa out of 70 candidates who wrote the exam in KZN. A Junior achievers certification ceremony is due to be held in October.

So how do these learners get to be so smart? In starting their businesses, the learners each have a business portfolio whose function they have to fulfil whether it is MD or accounting manager.

Fashion accessories seem to be the in thing with the learners with each group deciding to make and sell fashion accessories like chains and earrings. One of the groups; Blink Creations have specifically chosen to make hand chains with names. Having had to work around personality clashes and production problems, Blink Creations believe they will be more profitable than their competitor, Fancy Fashion Accessories (FFA) who makes a wider range of fashion accessories.

The learners feel that participating in the programme has given them a sense of the inner workings of the business world. Noluthando Mncibi from Wentworth Secondary says that her confidence levels have increased ever since joining the group because she has been compelled to interact and negotiate with other learners from different schools. Gugu Dlamini from Enaleni High school says her business studies marks have improved remarkably because of the skills she has learnt during the programme.