04 Apr 2013

A Motswana man has launched an entrepreneurship programme dubbed Mini-Company Academy to integrate business skills into the education system.

Launching the programme at Maru-a-pula Secondary School on April 3, the programme director, Mr Barolong Mouwane, said the programmme was aimed at inculcating the entrepreneurship culture from an early age. He came up with the concept after benchmarking in Sweden and United Kingdom.

The Mini-Company Academy, Mr Mouwane said, was a two-year hands on business incubator programme designed for students.He said, the pilot programme would begin at Maru-a-pula School “whereby the medium predominantly used to train students is through the running of an actual company, which will also form part of the school's co-curricular.”

In this programmme, Mr Mouwane said the students would be divided into groups of 10 and form their own mini companies. Each of these mini companies, he said, would be assigned a mentor, or a volunteer established entrepreneur, who would adopt one of the mini-company for a period of two years.

During these two years, Mr Mouwane said the mentor’s role would be to provide students with hands-on assistance during the vulnerable start-up stage of their mini companies by co-signing cheques for disbursements or payments and approve budgets.

He also added that the assistance that mentors would provide would “typically take the form of a business plan, strategy, management, marketing, financial, legal and product development issues as well as facilitate exposure to a know-how network of outside business resources.”

“As opposed to classroom teachers, the mentors will act like facilitators rather than deliverers of knowledge in order to empower students to take charge of their own learning. The students will also be intrinsically motivated through ownership of and engagement with their own developed ideas,” he added.

Furthermore, for the success of the programme, Mr Mouwane said students would also be provided with a space where they could convene and use as an office and share the use of common equipment, such as Internet and fax.

Mr Mouwane said the Mini- Company Academy programme would follow a curriculum and there would be a graduation process “since there will be continuous assessment which will contribute to the students’ final marks".

“Students will be graded with written tests, feedback from customers or clients and colleagues, presentations, communications skills, business idea, profitability of the idea and innovation. Upon completion, students will also receive a certificate,” he added.

Through this programme, he said, students would also have an opportunity to interact with the outside world, gain business and interpersonal skills as they would perform all the tasks performed in an actual company such as; selling products and services, doing accounting, marketing products, doing tax returns, opening company bank accounts and depositing money. ENDS