Inter-college Entrepreneurship Competition
On Thursday 20th July, the college hosted an Inter-College Student Entrepreneurship competition at the Lilitha Guest Lodge, Butterworth. The event is part of promoting the DHET mandate to TVET College as indicated on the SSS Plan for entrepreneurship to be promoted amongst TVET learners. The mandate initially was specifically to be rolled out to exit level students however, as the College, we felt it is proper to introduce the concept of entrepreneurship at an entry level thus allowing even those students at entry levels to participate.
Ms Dodo from ECSECC, Ms Tantsi from Office of The Premier and Ms Kwaza of Kwaza Digital Solutions, all vested in entrepreneurship business development sphere were the judges for the competition. College Partners such as the Mnquma Local Municipality, Office of The Premier pledged to assist the participants including those that did not win on the day.” It is the responsibility of my unit to ensure that new ventures and business ideas by youth especially are supported. The college must just write formal requests” said Miss Tantsi, A Director from the unit that deals with Small Business Development and Youth business in the OTP.
All the participants received tokens even those that were not winners on the day. Boot camps to further develop the participants will be held on weekends to allow the students to take part in the normal academic programmes. (classes)
The competition is sponsored by Alan Grey Maker has four categories; (1) Business Idea, (2) General Business, (3) Artisan Business and lastly, (4) Tech Business. The college was however only having participants in the Business Idea and General Business categories. The winners of the Inter-college competition will go on to represent the College in the Regional Competition which will also be hosted by the College at the Dutywa Campus Hall in August 2023. All 8 Eastern Cape TVET College will be bringing students to participate in the said event whose winners will then go represent the province in the national competition.
The vision of the programme head and team is to advocate the programme to attract more participants for future and thus also allow the college to partake in all the categories available in the programme. All registered students are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunity and take part in 2024 when the application window is open again.
