Leadership Magazine May 2019 http://mags.capemedia.co.za/leadership/403/ it’s on page 66 & 67
I have just finished a Skype call with Joseph where he was sharing his
screen with me and we were discussing a website he was working on. Skype,
sharing of a screen, a computer, pretty basic right? For me, it was a moment of
utter pride and a realisation that we are onto something wonderful with our
Awesome AfriCAN initiative. You see, a year ago, Joseph Bernard who lives in
Imizamo Yetho (IY) in Hout Bay, had no computer skills, ‘Word’ was something
that formed part of a sentence and ‘Excel’ something you did at school and on the
sports field.
Investing in the community and being a
responsible corporate citizen, is a key building block that we at Reputation
Matters measure as part of our reputation research methodology. This is an area
that has always been important for us especially in terms of the type of
projects that we take on. But, with that said, I didn’t feel that we had our
own Corporate Social Investment (CSI) program quite in place, we invested our
own time in different areas, planted the odd tree for someone’s birthday, but
it didn’t feel very strategic. It was important to me to find something that
linked to our core business of research. I just did not know where to start. Our
virtual office predominantly active in cyberspace, felt very far removed from my
local community, I just was not too sure how to link the two together, but knew
that there had to be a way.
Majority of the research projects that we do
is done via online surveys; however, we are seeing an influx of corporates who
want to engage with their bigger stakeholder groups that don’t necessarily have
access to technology to complete an online questionnaire. In those instances,
we go back to good old traditional paper based surveys. With one such a
project, we had a significant amount of paper based forms that needed to be
manually captured. I turned to the local running club that I belong to; one of
the development runners had asked me for quite some time whether I had some
work for him. I then saw this data capturing as an excellent opportunity to get
him on board. Unfortunately it came to the fore that he had no computer skills,
he indicated that he never had an opportunity to learn this skill and even
though he had been to the library to try and teach himself he just did not know
where to start. I then realised that computer literacy was where we had to
start. Before we could involve the community with data capturing, we had to
take a step back and empower them with computer skills. If one does not have
access to computers or basic computer skills, you are cut off from so many
opportunities, especially when it comes to writing and sending out a CV.
I’m a proponent to work with the community in
which you live and work, so my focus has been Hout Bay. With the help of Mathias,
the said runner, he helped me to find the most amazing computer facility next
to IY and I met Life Manuwe, SETA accredited computer facilitator. It broke my
heart to see this wonderful computer centre being underutilised due to the lack
of local support. Unfortunately the
computer classes can’t be run for free, there are overheads and his
facilitation fee that needs to be covered, it’s really unrealistic to ask
community members to pay for a computer course if they are living hand to
mouth. We worked together on a program and I helped Life to generate
sponsorships for a pilot project; I will be forever grateful to these generous
sponsors. I did not want to start a new foundation or Trust, there are far too
many already in our Republic of Hout Bay, if I’m not mistaken at last count
there were close to 97! So I am working closely with Rotary International to
manage any sponsorships and funding that we receive, keeping things transparent
is non-negotiable. In October last year, our first pilot project kicked off
providing the group with free accredited computer classes. All 43 candidates
that signed up completed the course. It was a proud moment when they received
their certificates!
At the same time, I noticed an increase of amazing
tradesmen looking for work at the traffic intersection, with their basic
details neatly hand written on a piece of paper that they hand out to commuters
in and out of Hout Bay, in the hope that they will get a lucky break. I felt so
helpless seeing the numbers grow every day, and I just hoped to get a green
light so that I didn’t have to stop and politely decline that piece of paper.
At that stage I was chatting to a friend in
Australia, we had worked together on a project in the tech space in South
Africa many moons ago and we had kept in touch. I was sharing my frustration
with the situation and said that I would love to build an ‘Uber’ for tradesmen,
if you for example need a plumber you can find someone local that can help you,
once they have completed the project the person who hired them can leave them a
rating and reference. Stephen (said friend), then told me about the amazing
technology Moboom, he was involved with, and they could help me! Using Moboom’s
platform, I started building an ‘at your service’ website (I have never built a
website in my life, but this was so easy, I was rather chuffed with my
efforts!). So the next time, I got close to the traffic light, I hoped and
prayed that I would get a red light, and took every piece of paper I could lay
my hands on and started populating the website with each person’s details.
Where possible I asked them to send me photos. There is no commercial value to
this site, any work is agreed between the person and the person offering the
service; this is purely a marketing opportunity for the informal traders to
give them a tiny step towards more job opportunities.
As my website building abilities improved conversations
also progressed with Moboom, we started chatting how we could build cost effective
websites that load fast and rank well on search engine sites such as Google.
The beauty of the Moboom sites are that we can produce websites on scale, and
even better, I can tap into the newly graduated community members from the
computer classes, to build these sites using superior, proprietary technology
to ultimately, create jobs and alleviate poverty in the community, by the
community. When we don’t have research data to capture, they can capture an
entrepreneur’s data into a template to create a website for them.
Sea Harvest Foundation and the West Coast
Business Development Centre (WCDC) in Saldanha got to hear about the
initiative, and we rolled out a pilot project there as well, their requirement
was to train up 15 small businesses because part of the challenge that small
businesses are faced with, is that they can’t access corporates and vice versa,
because they don’t have computer skills, they send quotes via WhatsApp, which
unfortunately automatically disqualifies them as they are not registered on the
supplier data bases that often require a stack of paper work to be submitted
electronically. An added incentive of attending the course was that each small
business owner would receive their own website! These websites have been built
by guys like Joseph that attended our pilot computer class last year. Ten
people have already found permanent employment because of the additional skills
that they have gained through the basic computer courses.
I am really hoping to increase the number of
computer classes this year and to expand it to other areas of the country. The
big audacious goal is to expand this across the continent!
If companies would like to sponsor websites
for entrepreneurs, they are not just supporting the entrepreneur and small
business development, which has a direct impact on our economy, they are also
creating a much needed job opportunity for someone in our townships. If anyone
would like to get involved in the Awesome AfriCAN initiative, please do get in
touch!
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