New children’s book a magical adventure

Aspiring young entrepreneurs now have a roadmap to success with the launch of Young Adventurers: A Journey into Entrepreneurship, a new workbook launched on March 11 by Entreacademy.

The 65-page interactive guide is now available on Amazon.com and is designed to ignite creativity, nurture ideas and guide young minds through the exciting challenges of building their own businesses.

Created by Vongai Bhelebana and Audrey Nzira the self-published book invites kids to embark on a journey filled with activities and tools crafted to inspire imagination and develop business skills.

Bhelebana and Nzira are the directors of Entreacademy, a South African-based organisation whose mission is to empower young minds by fostering practical entrepreneurial skills and insight as well as providing fun and experiential workshops, workbooks and summer camps.

Nzira is a lawyer and was the president of a United Nations model called the Student World Assembly at the University of Pretoria in 2009, while Bhelebana is an educator. In 2012, she established Zimbabwe Entrepreneur Zone and Zimnovators which organised events and sourced information needed by entrepreneurs. She was also part of the team behind EntreLaunch a global accelerator programme and membership community.

The two debut authors are based in the diaspora with Nzira in the United States and Bhelebana currently living in South Africa. They established Entreacademy in 2018 and delivered programmes at South African schools, namely Summerhill in Midrand, Edu360 (Sandton), Cedarwood (Kyalami) and Reddam House Bedfordview (Johannesburg).

“I never thought I would write a book, but then when we had a chat, it just made sense. We had the information. And we could do it. So we did,” Bhelebana told Independentxtra.

The authors want to take the book to schools. “We spent months making sure the workbook was fun, engaging and informative,” she added.

“I think in business, we had to be quick-witted in understanding how best and which channels would be most effective to get our product or service to the market in the most viable way. We understood the value of our services, we understood our channels were limited to workshops and we wanted to scale the business in a manner that was not limiting. We already had created the workbooks that we used in the workshops with the kids,” Nzira said.

“Essentially, it was a matter of putting practical work into theory,” Nzira said, adding that the workbook didn’t need expertise in literature or writing or an academic setting.

“It debunks the need to always have such a background as we believe it stifles creativity and thinking outside the box (school). The whole point is to provide an alternative skill set to young kids outside traditional education. It goes beyond literature writing.”