An innovative parenting programme is teaching children to run small businesses and make their pocket money go further.
Backed by the Shuttleworth Foundation, the Ka-Ching! Business Parenting course, which was launched last year, teaches children between the ages of six and 15 to budget, save and invest, and how to start and run their own businesses.
After four years of research and development, it was created by Bishops Prep headmaster Midge Hilton-Green and Greg Bunyard, an MBA graduate.
Teaching business, financial awareness, wealth creation and life skills to primary school children, and using families and schools to assist, it also introduces the concept of ‘sharing is caring†to youngsters.
Shirley Erwee, a parent from Hermanus, believes the course is working in this respect. After starting a Ka-Ching! pocket money system with her children, they were able to donate money to charities. Erwee’s daughter (8) decided to support an orphanage and her son (6) gave his R40 to a Khayelitsha initiative. This donation helped a person pay his taxi fare to get his TB injection and Erwee’s son subsequently received a photograph of his beneficiary.
Bunyard believes South Africa needs more successful entrepreneurs. ‘Learners must be taught the skills that will empower them to deal with the realities of life in the ‘real world’,†he says.
He believes two avenues have not yet been fully exploited: the introduction for children of an exciting, experiential hands-on approach to job creation, effective business management and financial awareness; and the involvement of parents in their primary school education process. — the Teacher reporter
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