‘Mainstream entrepreneurship skills in schools’

JUNIOR Achievement (JA) Zimbabwe says entrepreneurship skills development must be mainstreamed at school as a way of equipping pupils with a business mindset from an early age.

With Zimbabwe focused on transforming itself towards an upper middle-income status by 2030, inclusive participation in mainstream economy is critical hence entrepreneurship coaching must take centre stage from a young age, says JA executive director, Mr Allen Chinhanhu.

He was speaking at a schools’ entrepreneurship competition event held on Friday at Townsend High School in Bulawayo.

“We’re promoting entrepreneurship at a very young age. As part of our core work, we want to encourage young people to know the practical skills that are related to financial literacy to work readiness and entrepreneurship at a young age so that they can grow to become self sufficient when they come out of school,” said Mr Chinhanhu.

“We want to encourage young people to establish companies and businesses that can end up employing others.”

He said as JA Zimbabwe they were offering help to schools through capacity building and skills development that involves a lot of training that goes into how to run a business from the beginning to the end.

“The training and mentorship come with a lot of material that they need to set up their businesses. We don’t necessarily give them cash to start and run their businesses because we want to encourage them to be innovative so that they can raise money for themselves,” said Mr Chinhanhu.

JA Zimbabwe is an organization focused on economically empowering Zimbabwe’s youth by bridging the gap between classroom education and the world of work.

Its programmes are anchored on the core content areas of financial literacy, work readiness and entrepreneurship and provide experiential learning opportunities for young people to prepare for their professional lives in the 21st century.

Mr Chinhanhu said they also work with other organisations and have partnerships with the Project Management Institute (PMI) Zimbabwean chapter to bring in a component of project management whilst they are running their businesses.

“This came out of the realisation that sometimes the young people don’t know how to plan their activities and sequence them well enough so that by the time they reach the competitions the business is ready,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mpopoma High School was the winner of the competition after impressing judges with their milk made from soya beans while Townsend and Maranatha came second and third respectively.

Mpopoma High School

More than 600 000 young people, both in-school and out-of-school, rural and urban have taken part in JA programmes in Zimbabwe since 1999.-chronic.cl.zw