Junior Achievement South Africa  forms part of the Junior Achievement (JA) Worldwide group. How is JASA set up in South Africa and who is the company working with?

JA Worldwide is the bigger international organisation and in each country is a stand-alone unit. The major, mostly private corporates, such as Investec, Sasol, FNB Commercial, Deloitte, Toyota, Citi, General Electric and a couple of trusts such as the (Iqraa Trust) in KZN, are Junior Achievement SA’s funders. The biggest funder at the moment for this year is Investec. They have given us the most money that any private organisation has ever given JA in South Africa and we’ve been going for thirty years. They gave us just over R)1.3 million this year, which is fantastic. We educate mostly learners in schools, so our focus is young young people from age 10, and we work with out of school young people up the age of 25. But our main focus is school goers. The focus is on the three pillars of entrepreneurship, financial literacy and workplace readiness. But our overall focus is to try and encourage young people to consider  entrepreneurship as a career option.

How many people work for Junior Achievement SA on your programmes in South Africa?

Our national office is in Jo’burg, and we have 9 full-time staff. We work everywhere, including urban and deep rural areas. Our model is based on contracting through what we call agents, so we have people that work for us around the countrystrictly under our control and supervision and training. Businesswise, it’s a very tight model. The money only goes into the area if we have a programme there. We find increasingly that there’s a great deal of involvement amongst the companies that are now funding us. Their focus is on entrepreneurship, which they fundamentally believe economic success is dependent upon. Some of them are taking it a step further and going beyond our programmes. Not all young people  who come through our programmes are going to start their own businesses but the ones who do, will be provided with the support they deserve and  need.

What is JA trying to achieve in Africa? How would you say that your programmes have been received in terms of returns?

We’re in 18 different countries in Africa. The South African office has been going for the longest but the focus throughout Africa is very much on young people  who are struggling. In Kenya, for instance, we’re working quite extensively in the slums around Nairobi, particularly where they had riots after the last elections. Our impact has been fantastic. Despite the economic meltdown last year, Junior Achievement SA received  had the most funding from private corporates since 1997. In terms of getting students or learners onto the programme, we don’t have a problem. And our impact is evidenced by a number of success stories. Our flagship programme, the Mini Enterprise Programme, which every single country in Africa is offering  entails the learners actually starting and running a small young people  business. Funders give us money to run a programme and it is within the comfort and security of a facilitated environment that the young people  physically start a business. We hope that they will carry on with the business, but because we’re working with school young people  they will often just focus on school work, but later on they will either go back to that business or start a new business.

What is your view towards the entrepreneurial environment in South Africa?
There still has to be a shift in attitude and approach and I think society has to stop frowning on young people who want to start their own businesses. At the moment, most young people will go into business because they think they can’t do anything else and aren’t yet seeing it as a choice; that this is actually a career option. Also, and I’m speaking generally,  I think for a young person to go out and start their own business is  almost frowned upon. It’s, ‘get a job’, and then you’re secure. We’re running the programme to give them an opportunity to start their own business. And, when you ask them, ‘If you had a choice between getting a job and starting your own business’, the majority still say, ‘I’d rather just get a job’. Part of what we try and do, certainly in South Africa, is to change that attitude. People come into the programme thinking, ‘I’ll never be able to start a business, I’ll never be able to make any money’, and they leave the programme thinking, ‘I can actually do this’.

What is your message for entrepreneurship developers going forward?
There has to be a far more holistic intervention around entrepreneurial education and opportunities. There are too many people doing little bits here and little bits there and trying to plug the gaps. We reached 28,000 young people  last year, and that’s fantastic. But when compared to 0.001% of our target audience it’s minimal. There has to be a big drive towards entrepreneurial education and a big focus on trying to change the attitudes of young people.
Institutions and government should work with people like us who’ve been doing it for thirty years – we’re experienced, we’re flexible, we’re adaptable, and we work fast – we’re not this massive organisation that takes ages to turn a corner. In Malaysia they have a whole ministry that just focuses on entrepreneurship and that’s what should be happening here. . There has to be much more of a consolidated relationship between government and the private sector and civil society.