Nneile is an inspiring young woman who didn’t let the challenges of high unemployment in South Africa be a barrier to her earning a living. She developed her Minute Word game with the help of her university professors and began producing the game on a 3-D printer to prove her concept. She hopes that with greater production capacity, she can go on to compete with the likes of other famous board games, like Scrabble.
Nneile Nkholise was the second-prize winner in the technology and finance category of the 2016 Social Enterprise Challenge in the Free State. Nneile invented the game, MinuteWords, after spending time at Tlotlanang primary school where teachers were very strict on spelling. Every week the teachers would have a spelling test quite similar to spelling bee, and it was the most intense yet fun part of learning languages better. This inspired her to make learning fun, so she came up with the idea of making an easy-to-play word game that all ages could enjoy. She believes that this also helps young people develop their vocabulary and improve their reading skills. Not only that, it takes them away from watching TV or playing on their cell phones when they could be interacting with friends or family.
So far she has created the prototype of the game, and is in the process of designing moulds through the Product Development Technology Station (PDTS) of the Central University of Technology. Once the moulds are complete, she can start launching the game – hopefully still in time for the 2016 holiday season.
Please help Nneile in realizing her dream to make MinuteWords one of the world’s most played games – her vision is for people to play MinuteWords anywhere and everywhere – in the car, at the hotel, on the plane, camping, or just at the house. The total cost to manufacture the entire game and produce 500 boxes is R240 000 but she has already raised R170 000 towards this amount. Please help her raise the other R70,000 so she can realize her dream.
Nneile Nkholise is a self-made entrepreneur with a passion for educating young people in fun and entertaining ways. She has already raised significant funding on her own to develop the first game sets and hopes that through crowd-funding, she can increase her capacity to supply the nation, and even the world, with MinuteWords!