The Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) has launched an additional delivery site for its students and the local business community with a state-of-the-art networking and co-working space at the University of the Western Cape’s (UWC) Innovation Hub in Parow.
This new delivery space is further amplified and enhanced with state-of-the-art Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality housed on the ground floor, which will assist the CEI in empowering both unemployed youth and existing community entrepreneurs to embrace digitisation and coding skills needed for the 21st century.
The CEI Director, Abe Oliver, said his department is excited to assist and empower businesses to become more sustainable.
“We strongly believe that these capabilities will help build an inclusive economy to support community entrepreneurs. The goal is to ensure we are rising to the challenge of how we combat unemployment and transition from necessity-based to opportunity-based businesses. Rising to the challenge our country faces, it is addressing how we should build inclusive economies that can ultimately restore dignified livelihoods for all South Africans,” Oliver said.
He believes the new site provides great accessibility to students and entrepreneurs from surrounding communities.
A second initiative for CEI is to bring entrepreneurs and students closer to the future, which is focused on augmented and virtual reality. This will also enhance their perspective on how they look at technology integration into their businesses.
“The move is an expansion of the CEI to provide an additional delivery site to strengthen our resolve to influence UWC graduates to embrace an entrepreneurial mindset that will be followed throughout their careers and into their communities.”
He said it will also help transform community small businesses into real game changers, becoming catalysts for revitalising stagnant growth in their townships or communities.
“There is also the ecosystem approach, which builds on the premise that we cannot do this alone. We need to connect with ecosystem partners, and being so focused on small business development in the northern suburbs will bring the ecosystem partners closer for deeper collaboration.”
It may offer expanded funding opportunities for community-based entrepreneurial projects geared towards graduates who are unemployed or students who are not in entrepreneurship or not in education and training.
The CEI will offer access to networking, entrepreneurial skills, business management skills, digital skills, and design thinking skills, which will be supplemented with personalised coaching and mentoring support.
There are plans to have monthly social coffee clubs to connect aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs, aiming to share best practices and be inspired by others who have overcome adversity through resilience and innovation.
Olivier said community entrepreneurs lack consistent access to networks. “ We believe it is vital to the sustainability of community entrepreneurs to know that they are not alone. We have a database of seasoned coaches and mentors who will be on standby to benchmark the community entrepreneurs’ current reality to plot an action plan towards their desired future.
