With decades of experience in pre-schooling in her back pocket, former principal, Scilla Edmonds has, since 2023, been collaborating with Teach A Man To Fish, provider of practical experiential entrepreneurship education for young people, in partnership with The Saville Foundation. In 2012, Scilla opened an opportunity for her young learners at Birches Pre-Primary School in Pinetown to be part of the School Enterprise Challenge, an educational programme teaching business and life skills.. Now, she leads the Early Years Enterprise (EYE) with the organisation to help preschool teachers raise learners’ environmental awareness and put in place basic entrepreneurial skills. The EYE she facilitates runs on 4 Saturdays over three months when teachers learn how to teach their small charges, as they make products from recyclables, about the value of money and the setting up a profitable school business. ”It’s a win-win,” said Scilla, “The children begin to understand that there is a value attached to what they would otherwise have thrown away, they develop creativity and business skills; the parents become involved in their offspring’s education and also become more aware of environmental issues. As a bonus – it is a wonderful source of fundraising through products being sold at school events and markets!”
Two of the participants on the course running at the moment are owners of ECD centres partnering with The Domino Foundation. Happiness Zulu and Zikhona Diya have been part of the NPO’s ECD team and are now running their own schools and are adding to their skill-sets in through EYE, having already completed courses in small business development. Happiness commented: “This is valuable entrepreneurial training which I can teach to the children in my pre-school. They can learn to make money, save it and use it wisely.”
Zikhona added: “We are also learning about how to teach the children communication, fine motor and counting skills...all very important even when you are a very young business person!”
Scilla said that this initiative had been so well subscribed, that a further Enterprise training will be available later in the year! She invited pre-school and pre-primary teachers interested in the training to watch the media for details.
