Touching children’s lives through visual learning
Kwatsaduza - Through his love of children and art, local resident Senzo Mthembu has been able to create a business that he enjoys and employment for five other people.
Mthembu has created two children’s colouring books and is currently working on an animal, comic and a pre-school book, which will include shapes, alphabets, tracing, pictures, months and days, among other things.
“I was born in KwaThema, where I started my schooling at Sakhelwe Primary School, and my love for drawing began at about the age of 13,” he says.
“I then moved on to Laban Motlabi Secondary School and completed my matric in 2007.
“I proceeded to work for a short while, however, I was fortunate enough to be able to study civil engineering and construction at the Ekurhuleni East College, which I completed in 2014.”
Mthembu then moved to Duduza.
“I had plans to do house plans, but I found it hard to start up that business and I somehow ended up falling in love with creating children’s books, something that was inspired by my son.
“I needed to find interesting ways of keeping him busy, which soon gave birth to the idea of these books” he says.
Last year, Mthembu opened a company called Bennico Commic and started creating his first two colouring books, which are aimed at assisting children with early childhood learning programmes.
The books cater for children from three to seven years old.
“To makes these books accessible to crèches who order them, I work with a staff of five people, three of whom focus on printing, while two are in charge of the promoting and selling and I create the drawings,” he says.
“The challenge we have is that, due to a shortage of resources, such as materials, the team is able to work only on Tuesdays, however, they wish they could work daily.
“We have, however, been receiving a good response from local crèches.”
Mthembu adds that due to being able to work on only one day in a week, a major problem is that the delivery time frame of books is longer than what they wish for.
If they had enough materials to work daily, they would be able to push out more orders at a faster rate, as people are coming forward to say they can help with distribution in their areas.
Mthembu says his ultimate goal is to reach as many children as possible through visual learning and, at some point, to get his books out to big retail shops.
