Zimele High School, grabbed the coveted monthly prize out of more than 2,051 teams nationally working towards the ultimate win in the income portfolio category at the end of the challenge.
The challenge takes the form of a simulator where each team of four learners or students from the same school or institution are given an imaginary sum of R1-million. With this the teams trade on the stock market and invest in JSE listed shares over a six-month period. What they learn has great potential to positively impact the South African economy in the future as participants learn to make sound financial decisions.
Corporate Social Investment (CSI) Officer at the JSE, Ralph Speirs, says: “We are so proud of these learners. What these monthly wins reveal is that the participants are indeed learning how to invest in a practical way. They also encourage them to keep first place throughout the challenge”.
The challenge catalyst in Mthatha, Senzo Ndlangamandla, senior lecturer in the Accounting Department at the Walter Sisulu University (WSU), says the region has 13 schools in the challenge, and in the four years he has been co-ordinating the programme in Mthatha he has come to learn that it is the mentors who do the groundwork.
Zimele mentor, Gcobani Maloyi, is a third-year Bachelor of Accounting Science student at WSU. He says though they have a team strategy, which includes knowing the challenge rules and playing them well, such as keeping the objective of growth and income when finding shares to invest in, this is not how they won June’s monthly prize.
“We took a wild risk instead, we invested in a random share and it panned out, the learners couldn’t believe it! They are so excited about this win,” he says.
Maloyi says they have 10 teams participating at Zimele High, and this is their second year on the challenge.
“Last year we came third nationally in the income portfolio category at the end of the challenge. This is encouraging as it proves that the participants are learning something,” he says.
For Maloyi the challenge is very important as it educates the learners on “a good avenue to earn money”. He says when they presented the challenge to the school for the first time, the learners did not know about the JSE, let alone investing, and a majority did not even have access to cellphones.
“This challenge has made a difference. These learners have come very far from that first meeting. It exposes them to the bigger world out there,” says Maloyi who has been mentoring for two years.
The challenge is currently underway, for further information visit: http://schools.jse.co.za
