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Raymond Ackerman Academy for Entrepreneurial Development: Integrating Sustainability in Entrepreneurship
In the context of South Africa, the majority of youth have very little skills training or access to education or employment opportunities. In the informal settlements of South Africa there is a scarcity of educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth, including girls and young women, migrants and refugees, displaced persons, street children, indigenous youth minorities and children with disabilities. The Raymond Ackerman Academy was created by The University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business. Its aim is to target disadvantaged youth and provide them with skills development and sustainable entrepreneurship training. This program is critical to alleviating poverty through enhancing entrepreneurial development and sustainable livelihoods in South Africa. The curricula involves a component that draws on local communities and NGO's to facilitate experiential learning activites in the community, with a focus on eco-entrepreneurship & sustainable development.
In the context of South African youth explained above, a type of social disintegration can be observed: people live in segmented cities and demands towards environment protection, recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity, and crime reduction among others have increased. The youth are particularly vulnerable to crime, violence and drugs/alcohol consumption. There is a radical need for targeted training and skills development for the youth who cannot afford post-secondary education in South Africa. The research and training priorities of University of Cape Town's (UCT) Graduate School of Business is in line with the emerging priorities for sustainable urban development. The Raymond Ackerman Academy of Entrepreneurial Development (RAAED) is a tertiary level academy, situated at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. The RAA is a specialized unit of ‘The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’ (CIE) at UCT. The RAAED was created to provide youth from informal settlements access to professional entrepreneurship training and skills development at a world renowned post secondary institution. The program offers an innovative six month, full time program in entrepreneurial development. The course is targeted at youth from 18-30 years old who are aspiring entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Academy strives to help young people rise above their social, financial and academic constraints to achieve a quality education in entrepreneurship. The outcomes of the training will help to alleviate poverty and un-employment for the youths involved. The RAAED program aims to provide the students with education, training and skills development related to green business and entrepreneurial activities. Then provide a network of green business opportunities that they can explore back in their home community. The program embraces student participation in local communities, government programs, private sector and NGO’s in Cape Town.
The primary objective of this training is to enable students to learn how to start a business that integrates social and ecological principles and interventions in their business ideas.
The RAA Entrepreneurship training objectives include:
Sustainability approaches to entrepreneurship training.
Experiential learning activities like field trips to local communities.
Practicum based comment in job shadowing and getting real life work experiences.
Connecting curriculum content to local communities and local environments.
Social community development in volunteering with local townships and NGO’s.
Business mentors including established local business and post-graduate students.
Sustainable livelihoods promotion.
The Raymond Ackerman Academy for Entrepreneurial development aims at providing a holistic approach to the entrepreneurial development by introducing a component of “sustainable entrepreneurship” into its curricula. Sustainable entrepreneurship is an emerging area of investigation within the entrepreneurship approach. “The process aims at creating value in three distinctive dimensions: the social, economic and environmental”. It provides a holistic approach for sustainable local development. The three dimensions of sustainable entrepreneurship are interconnected and closely linked while it reveals the presence of large scale entrepreneurial opportunities grounded in problems that appear as issues of local development. RAAED courses comprise of classroom activities, group learning and activities in Business/Entrepreneurship and Life Orientation, as well as self-directed learning, numeric and literacy support and sustainability components. Based on the context of South Africa’s social, economic ecological circumstances of the youth involved, new approaches for learning based on ecological, participatory and practice based community development methods have been integrated and implemented for the RAA program. The integration of sustainability into the RAAED core curriculum acknowledges entrepreneurial thinking and behavior as a critical aspect of reaching sustainable urban development. The new curricula innovation bridges students with local communities through experiential learning workshops and fieldtrips. Out of school activities, field trips, workshops and volunteering enrich the experiences the RAAED students will receive during their program. Partnerships are created with the academy’s students that are related to solving social and environmental issues. The RAAED strongly links with a sustainable livelihoods approach and frames the students learning around opportunities in their local communities. The students have actively engaged with local communities in the field and have open channels of communication with local community networks. This 2010 semester, students participated in a sustainable livelihoods project in an informal settlement of Cape Town. A local NGO, called Green Communities provided a field trip and a range of eco-entrepreneurship ideas that the students could get involved in. The RAAED has built a partnership with Green Communities NGO to facilitate more fieldtrips, volunteering and internship opportunities for the youth in the next semester.
1) Interactive workshops:
Interactive workshops will provide participants with an orientation and theoretical overview of sustainable entrepreneurship. They will be able to develop a realistic toolkit for leading, supporting and facilitating their own sustainable enterprise or add value to current processes in their existing business. The students learn how to use entrepreneurial strategies and tools to manage the dynamics of starting your own sustainable business or enterprise. The workshops include theory, visuals, multi-media, group sessions, videos, power points, interactive open space discussions.
2) Field trips:
Students will participate in field trips to local communities and access a broad range of entrepreneurial opportunities first hand. They will have a local facilitator to guide and educate the students about the local areas.
3) Volunteering opportunities:
Students are provided with volunteering opportunities with some of the green community projects taking place. Students can choose which area they want to work with and will be evaluated upon their experiences.
4) Internships:
Local businesses and NGO's partner with the Raymond Ackerman Academy and offer internships during and after their program.
The addition of the new innovative sustainability component to the curriculum this year has been successful. Through, integrated workshops, field trips and volunteering opportunities students have local knowledge and capacity to harness local community capabilities and local natural assets, including water, energy, food and community members. The students link their entrepreneurship training with real life sustainable community development projects. This creates a multiplier effect, in which youth participants have eagerly spread the knowledge they have learned with their families, friends and communities. It has provided the possibility for working on sustainable livelihoods projects within the local communities.
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