As a Socio-Economic Development (SED) programme, FLAME aims to provide business (entrepreneurship) training and support to micro-enterprise owners to improve their capacity to start, manage and grow their businesses and thereby generate sustainable income and employment that enables them to participate in the broader economy.

• Advocate for and bring awareness to the importance of financial literacy in starting, running (managing) and growing business enterprises.
• Enhance financial literacy and business capability through the transfer of knowledge and skills.
• Reinforce positive behaviours and attitudes through the provision of business coaching and personal mentoring interventions.
• Facilitate greater economic participation by supporting income generation activities through business development support interventions and facilitating access to growth opportunities (i.e. access to markets).

Click here to access our FLAME brochure with further details.

Beneficiaries align to the Financial Sector Code (FS Code) requirements:

• Primarily (85%) black, South African citizens – including a 40% female reach – with an income cap of R250 000 per year.
• Small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMMEs) that qualify as Exempt Micro-Enterprises (EME) under the codes, with below R1 million in annual revenue.

The second iteration of the FLAME programme has 4 phases and spans over a 24-month (two years) period.

Phase 0: Advocacy and application: creates awareness of the programme within targeted communities and allows for participant application and selection

Phase 1: Induction and introductory training: Successful participants are onboarded and attend a series of workshops over a two-month period. Content covered include:

• Personal financial literacy
• Goal detting
• Introduction to entrepreneurship
• Ideation, modelling and costing
• Basic business budgeting

Phase 2: Training and support: After a further selection process, participants were accepted into this 9 month Incubation phase which involves the transfer of knowledge and skill in four learning areas:

• Business (SMME) financial literacy
• Business (entrepreneurship) skills
• Soft skills
• New Venture Creation short skills programme

Phase 3: Virtual growth support: A 12-month phase which is centred around building and developing confidence and self-reliance that will enable participants to independently undertake actions or tasks to improve and enhance their financial well-being and business performance (economic participation).

The programme rolled out in 2019 across three provinces; Western Cape (Philippi), Eastern Cape (KWT) and Gauteng (Diepsloot), with all regions in 2020, currently delivering phase 2. 

The ASISA Foundation’s FLAME programme empowers beneficiaries in low-income areas by transferring financial literacy knowledge and skills, coupled with basic entrepreneurship and business development skills to foster financial capability and enable greater economic participation.