An NGO has been going into local schools over the past 30 years to try and transform kids into the country’s future entrepreneurs. But is it working? Barrie Terblanche reports
There is a gap in the South African teenage market that cosmetic companies have failed to exploit. Lip balm, for some unknown reason, outsells anything else that high-school learners make and trade as part of a long-running local entrepreneurship development programme.
”One of the groups sold R17 000 worth of lip balm at, like, R5 a container. That’s a hell of a lot of lip balm,” says Linda McClure, head of the South African chapter of Junior Achievement (JA), an NGO that has been active in local schools for the past 30 years.
The organisation, which started in the United States and operates in 123 countries, offers an 11-week extramural course for Grade 10 to 12 learners during which they are taught the rudiments of financial literacy, the business cycle and starting up an enterprise — ”a real business, not a simulation,” says McClure.
In more than 500 mostly historically black schools across the country, groups of up to 40 learners gather one afternoon a week for the programme, for which they pay a fee of R50. Some theory is taught, but the focus is on actually starting a business, preferably more than a simple buy-and-sell enterprise. The manufacturing process teaches careful stock planning and the costing of intangibles such as labour.
But more important is the awareness that it raises about entrepreneurship.
”It can trigger something in them. Particularly in the rural areas, these kids will to a large extent just sit back and say ‘Well, there’s just nothing I can do’. I was speaking to kids down in Sedgefield where we’ve been working and I asked them ‘What has surprised you (about the programme)?’ and every one of them said: ‘That we could do this,”’ says McClure.
Entrepreneurship awareness is very low at schools, and where it does exist, misconceptions and myths abound. On the one hand is the idea that business start-up and ownership is the last resort if you can’t find a job.
”Generally, there is an attitude that you start your own business when you can’t do anything else. It’s not true and it’s not right. It’s damn difficult to start your own business. You’ve got to work damn hard, you’ve got to be bright. It’s not something you do just because you don’t have a job,” says McClure.
On the other hand, there’s the myth that entrepreneurship is a youthful thing, when in fact most new businesses are started by people in their 30s, after they’ve gained some industry and management experience. ”But often you’ll find that even if somebody starts [their own business] at age 30, they’d have been dabbling somewhere along the line, a little business here, a little business there,” says McClure. JA offers the first opportunity for future entrepreneurs to do this.
How successful the organisation is in South Africa is unknown, despite its long history. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that it makes a difference. McClure says: ”We find with our alumni and people who have subsequently gone on to start their own businesses, they will always come back and say ‘I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t for the JA programme’.”
But there is no proper evidence. JA’s database of participants only goes back to 2002. The first impact assessment has been done and more are planned, but the class of 2002 is still a long way off from starting their own businesses, apart from the most exceptional cases.
The lack of research is a major gap in JA’s efforts to lobby the government to make a practical entrepreneurship course a compulsory part of schooling in South Africa. Recent changes to the curriculum to include entrepreneurship are inadequate and theoretical, believes McClure. Even in the Western Cape, where government schools have a slightly stronger emphasis on entrepreneurship, no change is evident in the learners who come on to JA courses, she says.
Even if the state agreed, finding the right teachers to run entrepreneurship programmes would be a major problem. ”It’s quite difficult to just tell teachers to teach entrepreneurship. If somebody’s been a teacher all their lives, it’s quite difficult to have that mind shift.”
McClure says JA chooses its programme facilitators very carefully. ”The success of the programme is totally dependent on the quality of the facilitator.
What we’re looking for is somebody who is really passionate, and who can motivate these kids, because they can get bored quite easily, particularly in the first few weeks when it’s the theory stuff. It’s a passion and a commitment and an attitude. It’s really an attitude.”