Johannesburg, 30 June 2021:  Sizwe Mtshweni, a teacher from Mpumelelo Secondary School in Mpumalanga is calling on  community and regional media in the province to help spread the news about his school’s amazing achievements in the JSE Investment Challenge competition.

Mtshweni is a mentor of several teams participating in this year’s competition. In the past three months his teams have won three monthly prizes. “I see this as an incredible achievement by our school," says Mtshweni.

However, the  teacher says he has no way of informing the rest of the student body or the community about the achievement. Learners are at home to avoid spreading Covid-19. “Our school is severely under-resourced, our only means of communicating with learners is through announcements at morning assembly," says Mtshweni.

"Right now, learners are not attending assembly."

He said as a result many learners do not know how well their peers are doing in the competition. "It pains me that we have so much to celebrate with the rest of our learners and I have limited   means to share the news with them,” says Mtshweni. He suggested that local community and regional media could assist in that regard.

“In this school, teachers do not even have access to something as basic as email, which many schools and learners take for granted as it is readily available," says Mtshweni. Teachers only have a WhatsApp group for communicating developments around the school’s academic programme. Mtshweni says the principal, who keeps a close eye on how the learners are performing on all fronts including the Investment Challenge, was also amazed at the learners’ winning streak.

 Mtshweni says he has started a campaign to raise funds to enter more teams into the competition. He says the campaign will also create more awareness in the community about the benefits of the competition.

"We believe in the competition and what it is doing for our learners and the community." The JSE Investment Challenge’s primary goal is to drive financial literacy among South African youth and expose them to the dynamics of the JSE. “We want to ensure that when learners and students leave the education environment, they understand how to use their disposable income and acquire healthy savings habits,” says Ralph Speirs, CSI Officer at the JSE. 

The Investment Challenge is the JSE’s flagship project for retail investor education and part of its corporate social investment (CSI) initiatives.

May 2021 category winners were:

•  Income portfolio- Smart Minds Traders- Mpumelelo Secondary School
•  Equity portfolio-Goal Digger-Gansbaai Academia
•  Speculator portfolio- JSE Warriors-Crawford College, La Lucia
•  Speculator portfolio (University)- UZ Rocket-University of Zululand

Registration for the 2021 Investment Challenge are still open and interested learners and students can still participate in the competition. To register for the challenge, visit the JSE Investment Challenge website and to stay updated, follow the competition’s social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

ENDS

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