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SA high school wins global entrepreneurship competition
The Eastern Cape's Cathcart High School and their Dancing Taste Buds Café has won the title of 'Best Business Idea' at the international School Enterprise Challenge - an international programme which supports students and teachers to plan, set up and run a school business. More than 5,900 schools from over 110 countries took part in the challenge, with businesses ranging from a community gym in Belize to a vegetable farm in Rwanda with everything in between.
Cathcart High School's project incorporated the recycling of waste to develop the cafe, by using two litre bottles to make ottoman chairs for their customers to sit on, explained Sue Spies, who manages the project. Through meeting the needs of the business (furniture) learners have met another need (capital) at the same time: by making more ottomans than they needed, they have enough to sell.
Cathcart High School is one of the participating schools in the EEESAY project, a partnership between Teach A Man To Fish (TAMTF) and WESSA (the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa) with funding the European Union Delegation to South Africa. Through this project 6,000 learners from 40 schools (in the Amajuba and Uthukela districts in KwaZulu-Natal and Amathole and Chris Hani districts in the Eastern Cape provinces) are being provided with an opportunity to gain practical business skills by setting up and running an educational and environmentally sustainable enterprise at their school over a period of three years.
Cathcart High School learners and educators attended the EEESAY workshops and developed their business idea for a coffee shop called Dancing Tastebuds Café. Learners and educators from the school attended workshops and received step-by-step experiential learning on how to identify business opportunities, apply sound and sustainable business planning and then implement robust business plans to generate a profit.
“We at are feeling ecstatic upon hearing that we won Best Business Idea in the Schools Enterprise Challenge,” said Fiona Amos Brown, Cathcart High School’s coordinator. “We are inspired to continue making a difference as we guide learners to continue persevering in their business ventures. We would like to encourage other participants to continue striving to fulfil their dreams and not give up in the face of adversity. We all have amazing potential; the secret is to believe it.”
“Learners and teachers at Cathcart High School have made huge strides in entrepreneurial education this year. Winning the best business idea prize and competing against 6,000 schools around the world is a true testament to all their hard work,” says Susannah Morcowitz, the coordinator for the School Enterprise Challenge in South Africa.
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