Siyanda Queen Ngubane hails from the township of Illovo, in Durban, and is a qualified teacher. “I was working as an EA at Mthombeni Primary School. Toyota approached the school about the EAs opportunity and the school contacted me about the program. As a person who did her work to the best of my ability, the school then contacted me when the opportunity came, and that is how I heard about ORTSA.”
ORT SA hosted the annual business plan competition, on the 23rd of October 2022, at the Umlazi D community hall in KZN, sponsored by Toyota SA. The competition was held to help the youth see how their prospective businesses could succeed when competing with other companies, irrespective of the industry.
Ten youths were given a chance to pitch their business ideas to the judges to be in the top 3.
Siyanda Queen Ngubane was one of the youth who entered, and won first place with her business pitch for Kwangcukumane (PTY), a service that provides gardening resources. “I was very excited and nervous at the same time when I got into the top 10. When I was pitching, I had this confidence in me, wanting to pitch in such a way that I could cover all the questions the judges would have through my pitch, and I did just that.”
This led to her pitch being picked as the winning pitch. “I still have flashbacks of that moment.”
The top three winners received cash prizes of R10 000 for first place, R6 000 for the runner-up, and R4 000 for third place.
