In June 2021, we won R25,000 for our pitch to the MTN Donors’ Den to develop an online course on entrepreneurship. (The Donor’s Den was part of the Trialogue Business in Society Conference, and this year’s theme focused on using technology in education.)
Our online courses are burgeoning in popularity, and, as so many of our readers are unemployed young people, there are many requests for courses about work and jobs. We knew this would be an extremely useful course for many of them. The audience at the Donor’s Den obviously agreed and we set to work!
At FunDza, our expertise is in making information accessible and interesting. However, we are not business experts, and we knew we needed help with the main content of the course. We approached Avocado Vision, an organisation that offers sponsored training programmes in personal financial management and in entrepreneurship and business skills. (You can read about them here.) They very generously shared a wealth of information and materials with us, and were wonderfully supportive.
We then worked with writer Diane Awerback to develop the texts and work out the related questions for the course. As this is a topic close to our Director’s heart, she was integrally involved in the development of this material, and so the texts went through much scrutiny until they were finally approved and loaded.
The course culminates in a step-by-step explanation of how to write a business plan. And, because this course was so heavily subsidised by the donation to its development, we have added an extra competition component at the end. Participants who complete the course are invited to submit their own unique business plan to us, and the best business plan will win an investment of R5,000!
You can see the chapters that the course is based on here, and you can find the course, which is called ‘Own your destiny’, by scrolling down the course page here.
The articles and the course have been on for just over a week, but already there have been hundreds of participants registering, and comments on the site such as: ‘This has motivated me in a way that I can’t explain,’ and ‘I’ve learnt a lot about a business. Wow! FunDza is doing the most….They always make sure that they keep our dreams and aspirations alive.’
The course will finish at the end of November 2021, and the winner of the R5,000 will be announced in early December. Watch this space..!