The Temba Bavuma Foundation has enjoyed a successful relationship with St David's Marist Inanda and the St David's Marist Foundation over a number of years. Through this partnership, they have aimed to award students scholarships to attend St David's. This relationship extended to the St David's Marist Inanda Alexandra Campus, with the launch of the Future Founders Challenge, says the partnership.

The Future Founders Challenge: Soap-to-Startup Build a Business in a Box was co-designed by the Temba Bavuma Foundation and Empowered Futures, and launched at the school as a youth entrepreneurship and financial literacy activation delivered as part of Youth Month. The programme brought together 46 Grade 10 learners for a morning of practical business and financial skills, adds the partnership.

The partnership itself says that it speaks to the heart of the Foundation's work.

St David's Marist Inanda opened the doors to their satellite campus in Alexandra in 2023, aimed at increasing access to quality education within Alexandra, a vastly under resourced, yet vibrant community briming with potential. The campus aims to be a centre of educational excellence within the community, says the partnership.

This vision for creating opportunities for access to a quality of education that changes the trajectory of a young person's life is aligned to the Temba Bavuma One of the Foundation's core objectives. It has always aimed to open the door to the kind of education that changes the trajectory of a young person's life, adds the partnership.

The St David's Alexandra Campus model aims to bring that vision to life — allowing learners to access quality education within their own community and to remain rooted in their own community while accessing the standard of education and opportunity that was historically out of reach, says the partnership.

The partnership believes that a young person does not have to leave Alexandra to find excellence. The excellence is being built where they are.

During this initiative, learners worked in teams, each receiving a "Business in a Box" starter kit. Over the course of the challenge they will use it to create a product, build a brand, identify their customer, work out pricing and profitability and develop a complete business concept to pitch to a panel of judges, says the partnership.

The box is a deliberate part of the lesson. Rather than handing learners unlimited resources, it recreates the conditions that real entrepreneurs face, where funding, materials and access are often limited, adds the partnership.

Learners are encouraged to use the contents as the foundation of their idea or as a starting point to build on, while remaining free to source additional materials if it strengthens their concept. The aim is to show that innovation does not require abundance. Sometimes the most valuable skill is learning to be inventive within constraints, says the partnership.

It is a principle that mirrors the reality of many of the the communities the Foundation says it serves, where young people have long done a great deal with very little. The challenge reframes that reality as a strength.

The programme is designed with the aim to move learners through the full journey of entrepreneurship, from a single idea to a working business concept. It also aims to reflect the Foundation's belief that with access to the right skills and tools, young people can be innovative and successful entrepreneurs from underserved communities are not short of ability. They simply need access to the right tools and the right opportunities, says the partnership.

The story continues on Thursday, 18 July, when the teams return to pitch their finished concepts to judges. Awards will recognise the strongest work across five categories: Best Business Idea, Best Packaging, Most Creative Product, Best Pitch and Most Sustainable Idea, adds the partnership.

For the Foundation, this continued partnership with St David's is a continuation of a decade of work and a cementing of the vision that has guided it since 2016.

Over the past ten years, the Temba Bavuma Foundation has awarded 12 scholarships at leading South African schools, including St David's, and supported three University of Pretoria graduates now working in law, corporate services and coaching.

It has upgraded cricket facilities at three Gauteng schools, distributed more than 3 000 food parcels and meals to vulnerable communities and placed its first professional cricket mentorship with a player now competing at senior level, says the partnership.

Temba Bavuma, Founder of the Temba Bavuma Foundation, says it was meaningful to see, and be a part of the work being done in communities like Alexandra.

"Ten years ago, this Foundation started with a belief that talent is everywhere, but access is not. Seeing that belief come to life in a classroom in Alexandra, watching these young people discover what they can build, is exactly what we set out to do," says Bavuma.

From the cricket pitch to the classroom, the Foundation's through line has remained the same. It aims to find talented young people in places the world tends to overlook, building the bridge between their ability and their opportunity, concludes the partnership.

For more information, visit www.tembabavumefoundation.org. You can also follow the Temba Bavume Foundation on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or on Instagram.

*Image courtesy of contributor