"Creating economic wealth" is a new listen, live and learn theme, only introduced this year (2011). And like any other new concept, knowledge of a particular notion really matters. It has been a challenging stay in the house with most housemates struggling to understand the concept of our theme, and all of us are still vulnerable to this challenge. Thus based on clueless understanding of the theme, our house embarked on a first project that was not so solid and it crushed without any exciting results.
In most instances, education is widely viewed as both, a fortune and an investment. In academia, education is the only ultimate tool to success with emphasis to creative thinking and passion to make the difference. With regards to this, attaining and developing skills on our project was the first weakness identified.
Students as a body of opinion and collectively the house reached a conclusion to liaise with SIFE Stellenbosch, who were also invited to give a perspective of what SIFE is all about. Financial literacy, which basically focuses on general awareness on saving money and basic understanding of money, was a centre of our discussion. The house is now in collaboration with SIFE Stellenbosch.
According to Cathy wood "Focus should not be emphasized on communities around Stellenbosch only, but also to students who abusively use money or have difficulties managing their finances. There is a significant amount of students that are financially very illiterate and uninformed, therefore the house should also put this into consideration". There are different means and media to reach students, "Die Matie" being the most common one. With a new era of technology, taking advantage of social media like facebook, radio and other sophisticated routes should be adopted in the process.
The idea to liaise with ISOS (international student organisation Stellenbosch) is currently being undertaken. However, in smaller groups of international students, the house has managed to host some few significant gatherings in which dialogues on diversity and economic wealth were well discussed.
We merely have one month left, but we are very optimistic that we have enough to deliver during our house presentation early next month. Establishing mutual relationship with SIFE and the international society (which is our legacy) is a huge success for the house. Establishing this blog to convey our message, share and exchange ideas is a second achievement. We thirdly believe in our individual selves that we have instituted a strong foundation to prospective "tassies" dwellers if "creating economic wealth" will still be the house theme.
Being in Tassies has been a great experience to 2011 house mates (read our profiles in July 2011 posts in this blog). With our great diversity, we have managed to past tolerate each other, listen to each other, leave together and actually learn from one another. The bond that we established has to a personal level changed one another self being. Additionally, to most other theme houses most LLL students who have moved from university residences to LLL house have attained crucial self-reliance.
SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) is an international non-profit organisation that has teams in higher education institutions across 40 countries; there are 26 teams in South Africa. The main purpose of SIFE is to mobilize students to make a difference in the communities they live in by initiating or involving themselves in community activities that aim to better the standard of living and the quality of life of community members while applying powerful and influential entrepreneurial concepts.
