2016 IS GOING TO BE A LANDMARK YEAR FOR OUR PROGRAMME!

Wow! We're already one month into the new school year, and here at the Teen Entrepreneur office we have hit the ground running. The first of our Idea Generation Workshops at a number of our Entrepreneur Societies across schools in and around Cape Town have gone amazingly well. The level of commitment to the programme from both teachers and learners has been really awesome, and for us has served as confirmation that the programme will achieve what it was designed to do... to foster a spirit of enterprise development amongst our school-going youth. The learners we have interacted with thus far have had really innovative ideas, ones that, with help and support from the programme, can be turned into viable and sustainable businesses over time.
We are piloting the project at 8 high schools in the Western Cape, and requests to roll-out to the rest of the country are already pouring in. Our objective is to pilot 8 active schools in each province, in 2016 and increasing this to 100 or more in each province in by 2017, so if you are reading this right now, and your school has not signed up yet, do get in touch with us!

We are thankful for our private sector partners, SAP and Shoprite, for their support of the Teen Entrepreneur Programme. Their support has enabled those schools wishing to create Societies, but without the means to do so, to enrol and become part of the programme. We encourage other businesses to make contact with us so we can explore how they might be able to come on board to support this initiative.

Essentially, each school requires a minimum of R35,000 to set up and run an Entrepreneur Society - see enclosed video to give you an idea as to how these funds are apportioned:

If we can instil a culture of entrepreneurship amongst our youth, we will go a long way to creating a better outlook for our economy and our country.

Herzlia and Spes Bona launch their Idea Cafés with much excitement and enthusiasm!

Our Idea Café road show has kicked off, and schools are receiving us with much
excitement and enthusiasm!

Learners from the Herzlia Middle School are taken through the programme for the year.

Teacher and learners from Spes Bona High School discuss their business ideas at their first Society meeting for the year.

Back-a-Buddy partnership drives society launches in schools

Our long-term goal is to see that all high schools run Entrepreneur Societies across South Africa. While we believe that this goal is achievable, it is unfortunately a reality that not all schools are in a position to afford R35,000 per year to run the programme.

We therefore will continue to be reliant on funders for their ongoing support, and have therefore entered into a partnership with BackaBuddy - a crowd funding platform - which will enable each Society to continue to operate through fundraising.

This will mean that each school will need to build and maintain their network of stakeholders and alumni in order to assist the school with lobbying for financial assistance.

We appeal to all Society Champions and school principals to register their schools at https://www.backabuddy.co.za/charity/profile/sa-teen-entrepreneur-foundation in order to start building their networks and connections.

Should you need to talk to someone about the concept of crowd funding, kindly contact Catherine Taylor on E: catherine@backabuddy.co.za or T: 062 163 2276.