Equipping our future entrepreneurs

JUSTISIA SHIPENA
Takura Mufambisi: EMS

Once every year the Grade 7 Economic and Management Science (EMS) class hosts Entrepreneurship day. The prospect of making money, makes it one of the most anticipated days in the third term. Learners have a lot of fun while they are actually learning.

Entrepreneurship Day gives learners the opportunity to gain invaluable life lessons that will change how they think and prepare them for life. The children learn to set goals. They think about what they want to do with the profit: do they spend their money or do they save it.

As the learners interact with customers at their stalls they learn to engage with customers by making eye contact, smiling thereby developing their interaction skills. The more exposure they get, the better they will be at interacting with people ultimately selling more goods.

On Entrepreneurship day Mathematics finally has a real purpose! The learners see how Mathematics actually works when they run their stalls. They learn to calculate cost per item and profit per item. Hopefully this will help them get excited about Mathematics and see its importance.

Entrepreneurship day teaches the learners the value of money. By the end of the day the kids are all in agreement that until you’ve earned your first dollar it is hard to actually make money. Another life lesson, money does not grow on trees. It must be worked for!

On Entrepreneurship day learners get to create their own opportunities. As they plan on which product to sell, how to make their product unique they learn to provide goods in response to needs and wants. We get to see how creative our kids are from the wide range of goods they sell; cakes, potato skewers, toasties, toffee apples, burger and many more. While we hope that our children will never struggle to find jobs, the economy has its ups and downs. We hope that they will be able to create their own employment.

It is easy to take for granted that all goods will be sold on the day. When all goods do not sell as hoped by the end of the day, learners make a decision of what to do with the remaining stock…offer discounts or take it home. Appreciation of the risk associated with business becomes a reality as they come to terms with the fact that business does not always go as planned.

After a hard day’s work, the children are definitely exhausted but carry with them a sense of achievement. “So how will you spend your money?” I ask. The most common answer is “Save it most of it”. With a smile on my face I know the day has been well spent.