African Schools Shine in Global Entrepreneurship Competition

UK-based charity Teach A Man To Fish has announced winners in the School Enterprise Challenge from Zambia to Mexico, recognising the best school-based businesses launched in 2015
Extreme poverty remains a huge challenge at international level and one that traditional education often struggles to solve. Another pressing challenge in the context of global education is solving the youth unemployment crisis, with 75 million people aged 16 to 24 currently unemployed.
The School Enterprise Challenge was designed as a way of transforming large numbers of young people from all over the world from job seekers into job creators. The programme challenges young people to establish a socially responsible, yet profitable, business at their school. This offers a platform for providing hands-on relevant education to students, at the same time as generating extra income for the school. In 2015, more than 2,900 schools from over 100 countries benefited from participating in the School Enterprise Challenge. Those that reached business implementation stage generated an average income of $680 in their first 4 months of operation.
"We are delighted to be organising the School Enterprise Challenge for the sixth year running. With more countries and schools getting involved the competition will be even bigger and better and more young people will be equipped with the skills needed to enter the business world," Nik Kafka, CEO of Teach A Man To Fish
The overall Global Winner was the Kariba South Primary School in Zambia. Through its on-going involvement in the School Enterprise Challenge the school established and grew an impressive tailoring centre. The students have

generated impressive profit by using second-hand materials and by finding new markets in both Zambia and the UK.
"The Young Tailors Club is very important to me because I can now make a living from sewing. When I grow up I will start my own business making skirts, dresses, bags, aprons and school uniforms for my community." Clever, student at Kariba South Primary School
Other African Winners at different stages included schools from Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda, Mauritius and Rwanda.
Some of the other school businesses included a bakery using home-grown products in Ukraine and a start-up in Scotland that needed no start-up capital and had very low direct costs later on.
Official registration for the 2016 School Enterprise Challenge opens this month. Registration is free and open to all schools. For more information on the School Enterprise Challenge please visit:
http://www.schoolenterprisechallenge.org/

Our Mission and Vision

Our Mission is to enable schools to provide a relevant education, through enterprise, that empowers young people to succeed in work and in life.

The concept of helping others to help themselves is far from new. It was exemplified in ancient times in the Chinese proverb from which we draw our name: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

There are three core principles in line with this philosophy that guide us in our work:

Poverty Reduction - we intend to eradicate extreme poverty. Our programmes focus first on students from low-income families and marginalised communities.
Education - we exist to educate. Educational goals supersede any other aims our programmes have.
Entrepreneurship - we foster entrepreneurship. Viewing enterprise as an effective means to economic prosperity, our schools work to provide students with the skills and inspiration they need to generate wealth for themselves and their communities.
Our Vision is a world free from poverty where all young people are able to reach their full potential in life.

Teach A Man To Fish
Unit F5, 89-93 Fonthill Road
Finsbury Park
London N4 3JH
United Kingdom

This release was published on openPR.