DA Youth announces winners of entrepreneurship competition

Note to editors: The following is an extract from a statement released today in Parliament by DA Youth Leader, Makashule Gana, announcing the winners of the National Business Plan Competition. Makashule was accompanied by DA Leader, Helen Zille, and DA Youth Chair, Mbali Ntuli.

Over the last three months, the Democratic Alliance (DA) Youth has run a national competition to challenge young entrepreneurs to develop business plans for small enterprises.

We believe that by encouraging young South Africans to take control of their futures and become job creators, that we are making a positive contribution to addressing the escalating youth unemployment crisis.

The competition itself forms part of a broader campaign being run by the DA Youth that seeks to develop constructive ways in which we can assist young South Africans with achieving economic freedom in their lifetime.

The DA Youth’s economic freedom campaign, which began in 2010, has included the following:

• Lobbying for the introduction of a youth wage subsidy, which would incentivize business to give opportunities to inexperienced young people in exchange for tax breaks and could create hundreds of thousands of new jobs for young people.

• Promoting entrepreneurship as a means of addressing the youth unemployment crisis by creating a document that was handed to the Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies that outlined a series of proposals for ways in which government can facilitate increased youth entrepreneurship. The plan was well-received, and Minister Davies praised the DA Youth for our pro-active campaign and pledged to carry the proposals forward.

Today we are pleased to announce the winners of our business plan competition. We have been inspired by the creativity and innovation their entries displayed.

We received a large number of excellent business plans, all of which were judged by an independent panel of entrepreneurship industry experts including Lydia Zingoni of the Teen Entrepreneur Foundation, Charles Maisel of Innovation Shack, Bruce Wade of the Entrepreneur Incubator Academy and Dr Ruben Richards, author of ‘Bullets or Ballots: The ultimate solution to crime and unemployment in South Africa’.

Two entries tied for winning position:

Green Boards: Luvuyo Toni

Many schools cannot afford chalkboards, and those that can often have their boards stolen. Green Boards aims to leverage corporate sponsorship to paint green chalk boards onto the walls of every underprivileged school in South Africa with a specialist washable paint. These boards cannot be removed or resold and offer students and teachers a permanent and extremely cost effective space to express their creativity.
Ultimately Green Boards aims to expand into the Khayelitsha community and may even one day be able to offer communities spaces on the streets to express their views and creativity.

HUHO Street Gyms: Suzainne de Kock

HUHO Street Gyms give people access to gym facilities at a low cost relative to expensive gym contracts.
The company manufactures compact weights from concrete, paint tins and steel bars. It hopes to sell this equipment along with branded t-shirts, a beginners exercise manual and sign board to entrepreneurs, who can then charge people in their street a fee per minute to use the apparatus.

Not only will this business give opportunities to myriad entrepreneurs, it will give young people access to affordable exercise facilities as an alternative to joining gangs or using drugs.

Both Luvuyo and Suzainne have won:

• R5000 cash
• A R15 000 website design and hosting package
• A mentoring session with a professional small business coach

In addition, the other three entrants in the top 5 will each receive a R15 000 website design voucher.

Congratulations to both our winners! We look forward to helping two young businesses successfully enter the South African economy.

As the DA Youth, we will continue to run campaign of this nature aimed at realising positive change for young South Africans.

Media Enquiries:

Makashule Gana
DA Youth Leader
082 773 4755

Kelly Miller
DA Media Officer
072 226 9759