By Simphiwe Mabaso

Our much anticipated Demo Day has come and gone. The six JAMLAB teams presented their business models to an audience compromising potential investors and funders and other start up founders.

GlobalGirl Media South Africa exhibited our offering of the GlobalGirl Media Production Bureau, content development services for NGO’s and corporate clients. We spoke on our objectives and the plans for sustainability in terms of the future of the Bureau.

It was a great opportunity and honour to stand in front of our audience and present the product of the work done during the accelerator programme.

Prior to Demo Day, the JAMLAB accelerator programme facilitators invited us to an African Tech Hub cocktail event hosted by Professor Adam Habib, The Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand and Her Excellency Sandra McCardell, the High Commissioner for Canada.

The event was a celebration of innovation and enterprise in South Africa. It was an excellent opportunity to meet people running various incubation programmes across the continent. It was also a remarkable experience to network and engage with other young entrepreneurs and learn what they are working on.

Through the JAMLAB Accelerator Programme, we have grown a lot in the way we think about entrepreneurship and the South African media landscape. We’ve learnt that to be innovative it’s crucial to understand the context of the space you are in. This helps to understand what the white spaces in the landscape are and what you can do to fill them.

It has been an honour to be a part of the accelerator and to finally graduate is a privilege. With much guidance and mentorship from facilitators, Indra de Lanorelle, Kagiso Makoe and Phillip Mogodi GGMSA has been able to realise the much anticipated Media Production Bureau that has been an idea since 2013 and now in 2017 GGMSA is able to get it off the ground and employ the current girls that are in training through the Production Bureau. This means that there is a prospect for 15 new jobs in 2018.

GlobalGirl Media South Africa looks forward to graduating from the programme and running the Bureau as a sustainable social enterprise to open doors for many young women as a stepping stone into the media industry.

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