The story begins in the Phuthaditjhaba area located within the eastern Free State province of South Africa. Sheep and farming country where you drop down through the Drakensberg mountain on your way to Kwa-Zulu Natal. No heavy commerce or industry here. Just swirling morning mists and clear mountain air. The need? A community fast becoming unable to support the employment needs of their growing nu
mber of young people and local school leavers. Determined to find a way of helping children and youth to make more of their lives, a group of like-minded people formed a steering committee and dedicated the following 3 years to investigate what could be done. Consultation and research was carried out amongst numerous interested individuals and organizations. Both here and overseas. This led to the formation of the Education With Enterprise Trust (EWET) and the birth of the Youth Enterprise Society (YES) program, a uniquely South African concept, with its mission being: "To empower young people, through enterprise, to become masters of their own destinies." Or in other words, guiding young people to become business creators rather than simply job seekers. Two key criteria kept merging: on the assumption that funding would always be in short supply, it was determined that the programme had to be community based and community driven in order for it to survive; secondly, the whole package had to be so simple that it could be easily and confidently replicated anywhere. Hence its tightly structured "systems" approach. A pilot ran from 1994 until 1996 when "YES" had been launched as a national program with a current presence across South Africa. Continueous improvement led to EWET's in-school entrepreneurship education (ee) approach inclusive of an in-classroom component, YES clubs and the "Simama Ranta" competitive events.
