‘Transform in-school based projects into viable IGAS’

Nelson Sango
Correspondent
THE school is a community based institution, with a critical role to educate, model and transform such a community, and should be viewed in that context as an agent of economic change and transformation.
It is paramount to extract the potential of this institution towards creating a substantial benefit, not only to the entrepreurial development of the learning child and the revenue generation capacity of the school itself, but also to the local economic development of host communities and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the nation in pursuit of achieving a middle income economy by 2030, as fundamentalised by the National Development Strategy (NDS1) and His Excellency, President Mnangagwa’s mantra of leaving no place and no one behind.
The Heritage Based Curriculum rightly asserts as a policy device on the agenda for long term economic development that the genesis of such a pursuit is to target the child at an early age. “Catch them young”.
A certain religious legend goes by: “Let them come to me, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs”.
Schools, even before the advent of CALAs and the HBC curriculums have undertaken school based revenue generation projects.
The CALAs and HBC have, however, created and solidified a precise, clear and policy direction of how these projects are to be utilised for the child skills development.
It is, however, imperative to note that skills development needs to be complimented with deliberate imparting of fundamental entrepreneurship educational literacy, to enhance a child potential to create own, community and national wealth during and after formal education.
Learners, as they are groomed in practical subjects, happen to lack commercial abilities.
They are well versed in building, in carpentry in agriculture, but not where is it coinciding with creating and managing own wealth.
At least there is a relevance gap which should be managed by both parents and educators. The outlying idea is on infusing practical skill and entrepreneurial skill and knowledge through upgrading financial numeracy and acquired business acumen.
Entrepreneurial skill is then the knowledge to place records of your income generating activity into clear and understandable accounts. What are the records? Multiple school based projects do not have sales, purchases, cash books, debtor, stocks, credit records books, projected cash flows, asset registers among others, and without these there is no point of reference.
How now do we control beforehand losses and also anticipate future income streams, necessary cash disbursements and avoidable leakages? It is practically impossible.
The standpoint is now on creating a formidable, standalone child, able to combine classroom education, self-talent and the ability to take advantage of arising opportunities to grow oneself.
Insurmountable as it may appear, it needs resolve, collectiveness and determination among aligning ministries.
These are ministries of Primary and Secondary Education, Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development, Youth Development and Vocational Training, Women’s Affairs, Community Small and Medium Enterprises, among others.
Deliberate collusion among these Government institutions will bring out tangible economic wealth creation benefits to the school, the child and the general community.
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Small and Medium Enterprises has been making greater efforts, towards transforming entrepreneurs into calculative business people. Its intention, is to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities in the whole country, regardless of gender and age.
Whoever has the skill and ability has to be supported, in the spirit of leaving no-one and no place behind.
The scope of argument being forwarded by this write up is simple. Just like language is built and perfected at an early age of childhood development, it is indisputable that the most effective recipe to nurture a successful entrepreneur is during that very same stage.
Human abilities and skills are known to develop and grow concurrently, proportionally and supporting each other.
Children usually lack that support from home environment. This is creature of the fact that they spent the bulk of their time in school. When they come back from school, they get engrossed in household and family duties, after which in the evenings, they will attend to school homework under pressure from their parents. On weekends, most are going to church, thus most of their time they are attending to issues pertaining classroom education, family responsibilities and religion. Seldom is there opportunity and free role to be innovative and experiment with activities that capacitate personal expression.
They are computer cursers that are being controlled by their guardian mice. Such an environment is antithetic and toxic to the process of building a future entrepreneur.
Exacerbating the aforementioned barriers is the fact that though the concept of entrepreneurship has become a commonplace buzzword in todays’ society, it is negated by the fact that most parents do still value and prioritise academic excellence for their children ahead of any other achievement.
In that context, it is still rare for guardians to celebrate neither a brilliant nor a slow learner child, venturing into wealth creating enterprises. Even participation in family business, if there is one, it is peripheral.
Often, they are providing labour to a subsistence family enterprise, devoid of basic business management systems.
Such are simply identified as kungwavha ngwavha in paralanguage (hustling). No basic planning, innovation, growth, vision and records are existent. All financial decisions are made with absolute neglect of children’s participation, even when they have attained advanced ages to comprehend these. This is regardless that some are even learning such at school through academic curriculum.
Where at least moderate systems are existent, children are hardly owners of such enterprises, neither are they partners, contributing meaningfully to these enterprises. They are family servants.
External servants are better off, since they are sporadically protected by labour laws and can at least claim for decent working conditions. The externals employed in internal operations are even much better pertaining processes of business and commercial systems comprehension.
Some of them are managers, commercial operatives, accounts clerks, sales agents and some are involved in core operational activities of the business.
In essence, they are the core competence of the enterprise. They are the ones running the entity and in a matter of minimal time, they accrue, the basic skill of running the commercial entity.
Some deliberately don’t pass such skill to the entrepreneurs’ children since they are a realistic threat to their status quo in the immediate future.
With frustration, children withdraw from the enterprise, or participate as forced labour without any intricate interest.
They lack sense of ownership in the whole matrix structure of the business and some end up stealing whatever they can to supplement their personal income from the sweat they are placing in the entity. The consequences are worse off if they begin doing so in collusion with the working staff. It may require no out of box imagination to realise the dire consequences to the family and also the school and community as the child degenerates into a dangerous outlaw.

The writer is employed by the Government as an economist, and can be contacted on 0773993508 [email protected]