Together with Thuma Mina Teaching, we’re empowering teachers to strengthen EMS education in classrooms across South Africa.
In classrooms across South Africa, education is about more than covering a syllabus. It’s about helping learners build confidence, understand the world around them and develop skills they’ll carry into adulthood. When teachers are supported to do this well, the impact reaches far beyond the classroom into homes, families and communities.
That’s why our approach to education focuses not only on learners, but on the teachers guiding them every day. We equip educators with practical tools and trusted resources to make learning clearer, more relevant and more empowering.
Nicky Mbelebele, our Programme Lead for Financial Education, explained: “We are at Worcester Gymnasium to support one of our partners, Thuma Mina Teaching, and we’re doing a training session for their teachers. What drew us to them is that we’re quite passionate about financial literacy, and when they approached us, they’d also seen a need in Economic and Management Sciences (EMS), the teachers were struggling with resources to teach learners in a way that helps them truly understand the subject. This is the subject that they wanted to partner on. It was easy for us because we were already in the space to fund work that empowers teachers – and in return helps learners understand EMS better.”
By focusing on teacher empowerment, financial literacy becomes a life skill learners can understand, apply and carry forward.
Thuma Mina Teaching helps teachers turn curriculum into meaningful learning. By converting CAPS-aligned content into short, engaging video lessons, complex concepts become easier to grasp for teachers and learners.
Silke van Velden, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Thuma Mina Teaching, shared: “TMT, as we call it, converts the South African curriculum into a short, captivating video curriculum which we deploy open access to the nation. We focus on converting the Grade 7 to 9 CAPS curriculum. So far, we have EMS, social sciences and natural sciences. The uptake has been incredible. At first, our partnership with Capitec enabled us to develop the EMS resources. We started with the financial literacy component of EMS for Grades 7 to 9, and then expanded to the economics and entrepreneurship components.”
This accessibility helps ensure that quality education isn’t limited by location or resources – it’s available to every classroom willing to use it.
EMS plays a vital role in preparing learners for everyday life. From understanding money to making responsible decisions, these lessons shape how young people navigate the world beyond school.
Athelle Sass, an EMS Teacher at Esselen Park in Worcester, said: “Economic and Management Sciences is important in our society because we are confronted with it daily. It’s important for me as an educator to show our learners that there are ways to work responsibly with our money.”
By supporting teachers with clear, practical tools, financial literacy becomes more relatable – helping learners connect classroom learning to real-world decisions.
Supporting teachers also means supporting them as individuals. As part of the training experience, our team presents financial wellness workshops through the Uplift programme, creating space for open conversations about money and planning for the future.
Vernon Kriel, our Branch Manager in Robertson, reflected: “Teachers are working with the adults of tomorrow, especially EMS teachers. I think it’s important to offer them the necessary support. Many times, when you are in such a position, you feel like you’re fighting this battle alone. But that’s not the case. There are also institutions like Capitec that want to help teachers by saying: we have your back and we support you.”
This sense of shared responsibility reinforces that teachers aren’t carrying the weight of education alone – they’re supported by partners who believe in the long-term impact of their work.
At the heart of this partnership is a shared understanding that education works best when everyone plays their part.
As Silke van Velden explained: “In the education ecosystem, we do need to bank on each other. We bank on funders such as Capitec to help create an open access resource that is nationally available and free of charge to learners. We bank on teachers to make use of these resources in innovative ways in their classrooms. We bank on learners to pull their weight and to use these resources as a self-directed learning tool. And they need to bank on us to create high quality video lessons.”
When we empower teachers, we empower classrooms, homes and communities across the country.
And as Nicky Mbelebele concluded: “When we bank on each other, we make quality education accessible to everyone.”
