South Africa’s most successful low-cost carrier, kulula.com, will for a fifth successive year support the Step Up 2 A Start Up campaign for 2018, under the patronage of South Africa's Minister of Small Business Development, Lindiwe Zulu and American businessman and bestselling author, Robert Kiyosaki.
To date, Step Up 2 A Start Up has reached nearly 65 000 learners nationwide and in 2018 the entrepreneurship programme will again be aimed at learners in grades 9 – 11. This year’s theme, “Think Tech. Do Business” will focus on technological solutions for the many everyday hurdles facing South Africans.
The programme helps secondary school learners explore their entrepreneurial soul through creative learning and thinking, and in doing so, to innovate and create.
Shaun Pozyn, Head of Marketing for kulula.com says, “Empowering and developing our youth is at the heart of kulula.com’s corporate social investment strategy and our continued support for Step Up 2 A Start Up is a testament to this.
“kulula.com was born out of innovation and entrepreneurship 17 years ago and created to make travel more accessible. As a brand we realise the importance of inspiring and supporting the next generation of innovators.”
From the 18th of August to the 8th of September, learners will journey into the world of entrepreneurship, presented in an 80-minute feature-film titled iKusasa Lethu (Our Future), which will be screened at 14 cinemas nationwide. Each movie depicts an entrepreneur forming an enterprise to meet a need and culminates with a breakthrough in winning a new customer.
As part of the programme, each learner will receive a toolkit which will help them implement the skills learnt and develop their own business ideas and models. Learners will have the opportunity to compete in an entrepreneurial competition by submitting their business model canvasses for assessment and adjudication by a panel of industry professionals and sponsors.
During this process, at least nine top business models will be identified and the teams responsible attend a boot camp with some of South Africa’s best business brains in Johannesburg, and proudly flown by kulula.com. This will hone the participants’ skills, as they start to think more about developing their businesses based on the ideas they submitted. The programme will culminate in a gala dinner and awards ceremony where the winners will be announced.
“It’s important to cultivate the changemakers of business as we enter the fourth industrial revolution, which will seize and create opportunities that will change our society for the better. We hope to inspire our youth together with Primestars – which helps underserved communities to have access to education through TV and film – to create a better future for those who are ready to take it,” concludes Pozyn.