KiPiDi SYOB starts the New Year in Jabavu

The Youth Centre at the Methodist Church in Jabavu, Soweto was the venue for the first of our KiPiDi SYOB workshops in 2023.

The Jabavu Youth Centred proved to be an excellent venue, cool and spacious, on what turned out to be a hot Saturday morning.

After registration and a short introduction there was no time like the present to overcome standing up in public and speaking, as participants introduced themselves to their fellow classmates and shared why they enrolled and what they hoped to achieve.

Learning from our first two workshops

The learning and insight gained from the two workshops held in Slovoville and Green Village during the second half of 2022 helped refine the introduction to entrepreneurship in Kasi. The class opened by exploring what it means to be an entrepreneur, starting with a classic definition and unpacking the types of entrepreneur found in all economies all over the world.

Whether you are Apple founder Steve Jobs, Theo Baloyi of Bathu – entrepreneurs of opportunity, or an entrepreneur of necessity and not so famous, you are an entrepreneur. You’ve identified a commercial opportunity, a gap in the market and assumed the risk of launching and growing a business based upon your idea. Scale is what separates you!

Ideas are not enough

But ideas are not enough. Entrepreneurs display certain characteristics (traits, behaviours etc.) and this is what the class explored next. There’s a shopping list of the qualities that successful entrepreneurs possess. Focussing on those characteristics that seem to dominate much that is written about entrepreneurship the class discussed the characteristics they believed to be important and present in the entrepreneur’s toolset.

Passion was a dominant theme in the discussion. Without passion to sustain you along the journey, success might prove to be a bridge too far. Adding an element of controversy is what KiPiDi is all about, so I tossed in the idea that maybe developing a commercial opportunity to pay the bills, irrespective of whether the idea is accompanied by a healthy dose of passion, is called for first. Passion at this stage of the journey is an added benefit! Needless to say the debate was intense.

Entrepreneurship is a process that can be learned

There is no right or wrong answer, or a complete list of characteristics displayed by successful entrepreneurs. More importantly was the observation that these characteristics could be learned, developed along the way.

And learning is the abiding message of KiPiDi. Unfair as it is, the lottery of birth may dictate the starting point of an entrepreneur’s journey, but it is the choices made thereafter that will determine in no small measure what lies on the road ahead.

Entrepreneurship is first and foremost a process that can be learned.The knowledge, skills and characteristics demanded of an entrepreneur can be acquired and developed. It’s not a case of either you are born an entrepreneur or not.

In South Africa, a country with an economy that is stagnating, how a person sustains oneself economically comes with a limited range of choices. 

Entrepreneurship is one such choice, perhaps the only choice, and that is what KiPiDi is all about.