With systemic poverty and unemployment on the rise in our community, the Love Howick Dream Centre was birthed to break the cycle of poverty, by equipping and empowering the unemployed with employability and entrepreneurial skills needed to support themselves and their families. Using the ‘Work for a Living’ programme developed by Siya Sebenza, the Dream Centre runs various training programmes aimed at addressing the barriers to entering the job market, as well as overcoming the skills deficit present in our labour force. Through lectures, role playing, assignments and mentorships, this programme has a proven track record around South Africa of producing employable adults who have strong work ethic and a passion for excellence, integrity and commitment in the workplace. Some examples of courses on offer include: merchandising, cashiers, computer literacy, waitering, barista training, welding, office management and entrepreneurship. Please see www.siya-sebenza.co.za for further information on courses and see for yourself how students graduating from this programme are sought out by industry leaders.
As the Dream Centre celebrates its first anniversary this month, it has been incredible to see how many lives this project as impacted:
• Total of 140 students have completed the Work for a Living Job Readiness Programme with the biggest class recorded being 27 students in June 2019
• During the 3 week Work for a Living programme, each student completes a total of 24 volunteer hours. This means that a total of 3360 volunteer hours have been served by our students to support the local economy
• Of these 140 students, 55% of them have managed to find employment with many positive reviews from employers about the calibre and integrity of our students
• 50 students have completed the Computer Literacy Course
• 50 students have completed the Office Administration Course
We are excited about the future and thank all our volunteers for their generous support of this project. We are looking to increase the number of Job Skills Courses we offer in the coming months, with the addition of training for waiters, merchandisers and cashiers.
The Dream Centre is in urgent need of good quality computers for its various training programmes. If you would like to find out more about these programmes or how you can support us, please contact Ray Gumbo (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
News supplied by Love Howick.