The official unemployment rate in Zimbabwe is currently running at 94%. This leaves all but a handful of people to survive using whatever skills and knowledge they have whether they live in towns or in the countryside.

With over 400,000 youngsters leaving school each year, there is a desperate need to further develop the existing culture of entrepreneurship so that young people are better prepared to set up and run small businesses or help improve and expand a business already run by members of their family.

Rotary e-Club of London Centenary intends to partner with Junior Achievement (JA), a well-established world-wide organization set up in the USA in 1919, which promotes business education in school, http://www.ja.org/.  In the UK and Australia, the organization is known as Young Enterprise(YE), http://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/.

In Zimbabwe it is known as Junior Achievement Zimbabwe or JAZ- http://zimbabwe.ja.org/ and over the past 10 years nearly 20,000 young people have participated in its programmes.

These range through each year of High School, starting with games that teach the language used in business through to the most senior program taken by 16 year-olds where they actually start up and run a business.

The senior programme involves a group of 20-25 students. They are mentored by teachers and people with business experience. It is a 16-20 week program involving raising capital, sourcing supplies, manufacturing a product or providing a service, selling these, supporting a local charity and paying taxes (a contribution to their school), before paying share-holders and splitting any profits amongst themselves.

Zimbabwe is leading the way in JA Africa in that they have developed a program for the Out Of School Youth (OOSY). This program helps young people who cannot find jobs. 

London Centenary plans initially to support two groups of students undertaking the senior programme. This will cost £500 for each group. Your assistance is requested in helping us to reach our target of raising £1,000 by the end of June 2013.

Zimbabweans have shown themselves to be creative and hard-working. Let us make a contribution by helping young people to leave school with the basic skills and knowledge they will need to succeed as entrepreneurs. Who knows, one day one or two of them may become employers helping to reduce the number of unemployed in Zimbabwe.

For a brochure on Junior Achievement in Zimbabwe, please see here.