KZN represents South Africa in 2015 Enactus World Cup

The team will represent South Africa at the 2015 Enactus World Cup, which will be held in Sandton, where they will compete against winning teams from 35 countries. This will be the first time the event will be held in Africa.

Enactus is an international community of student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better more sustainable world. The NPO is active on more than 1,600 university campuses in 36 countries.

Enactus SA hosted the 2015 Enactus SA National Competition over two days and 20 out of the 28 higher education institutions that are enrolled in the Enactus programme, participated this year. Sponsored by Barloworld and Harmony Gold Mining, the event was hosted at Sandton Convention Centre and was attended by over 1050 students and business leaders.

The UKZN team presented two of its seven outreach projects executed during this academic year.

Winning project - recycling

The 'Go-Recypro' project is a recycling intervention that seeks to address environmental sustainability within the KwaSani Municipality in Underberg, KwaZulu-Natal. Through this intervention, the UKZN Enactus team assisted the Bazamile Cooperative to construct an incentive-based recycling business model that involves the entire Himeville Community.

According to the KwaSani Municipality's latest Integrated Development Plan (IDP), two thirds of households in the municipality currently have no access to refuse removal services. After conducting a needs analysis in the Underberg community, it was discovered that there were large volumes of unsorted waste in the area and informal settlements were excluded from the waste management service.

The municipality also admitted to having been unsuccessful in effectively managing waste in the area, hence the excessive transportation costs. Through the team's partnership with CHEP South Africa, an international company that is concerned with the social and environmental issues in Underberg, it proposed the Go-Recypro project as a solution to the municipality. Through this project, the cooperative has employed nine people; the municipality has managed to save R71,000 and 2,400 community members are now more informed about the importance of recycling.

Winning project - health & food security

The team's second project is 'Karabo Beracah', an initiative that addresses issues of health and food security. The team worked with Thuli Matubatuba, from EMxhakeni community. Matubatuba had one hectare of land where she farmed traditionally, she had a water supply system failure, did not have a stable market for her crops and lacked basic business and financial management skills.

Through the team's intervention, she was introduced to agro-processing, moving away from conventional farming; transforming raw materials into final products and registered her and four other community members as the Karabo Beracah cooperative.

The cooperative was empowered to independently develop two products, melon jam and prickly pear vegetable juice. They then diversified the product range to variety of flavours to include beetroot, cucumber, pumpkin and sweet potato. The melons are first harvested then go through an organic process where the melon is converted to a jam. Enactus-UKZN team introduced treacle sugar as a key ingredient because of its nutritional property to help balance insulin levels. More than R6000 has been generated from 400 units sold to date.

The team also introduced the cooperative to a wholesome Moringa meal. A product made up of yellow maize and Moringa powder, which has seven times more vitamin C than oranges, four times more calcium than milk and three times more potassium than a banana. In addition, it acts as a natural immune system booster.

Yellow maize has a high concentration of protein, calcium and fibre. Hence, the combination of these two rich ingredients results in the nutritious wholesome product. In just one month of testing this product on the market, the cooperative have successfully sold 50 units of the Moringa meal. Of these, 10 packets of the Moringa meal have been sold through the formal market, in the Health Box store in Westwood Mall, Durban. The cooperative has grown from 5 to 12 members, creating seven more jobs. The 12 cooperative members can now better manage their business through the financial literacy and business management training organised by the team.

Other winners

The University of Zululand Enactus team was awarded second place, while University of Pretoria came third and the University of Venda was placed fourth. The following four teams were placed fifth:

• Durban University of Technology
  
• Mangosuthu University of Technology
  
• University of Fort Hare
  
• University of Limpopo

For more information, go to http://enactus.org.