Description

The Skills Development Centre (SDC) is identified as a primary need due to the huge number of young people who not get the opportunity to acquire the required skills necessary to sustain themselves into the future, with the lack of financial resources being a huge deterrent. As result of that, there is a lot of illiteracy among the youth and they miss out on the opportunities to receive a, core and fundamental, basic start in life towards achieving meaningful education.

To our knowledge, this research is the first of its kind performed in the area and the participants were enthusiastic, with all of them showing a primary need for education and development at a personal level, as well as the collective community.

The aim is to provide an array of skills and development opportunities including: Sewing skills, Driving and Endorsement, Computer Literacy and Agroecology. The opening of the center is planned for March 2020.

Participation

TransCape has been working in the Mankosi community since 2004 and we have successfully established several projects and learned a lot on the way. We have met with the local leaders including the local chief and headman for the buy in and most importantly, to ensure the needs covered by the project are of primary importance to everyone. This is where we first heard about the need for a Skills Development Centre.

It was decided that to cover the primary needs, and to ensure we cover the gap, a research study had to be undertaken to discover more about the interests, needs and fears of the community.

We then visited 6 villages within Mankosi to reach every corner of the community and as many people as possible. In order to draw interest, we demonstrated during the meetings, in an orientation form of presentation, the various skills set we were looking into for the program and what the possibilities for each field are. After the film a questionnaire was provided for each participant to fill in.

120 people attended the information days and gave direct input on the needed skills. The SDC team goes back to the same community members to update them on progress every 6 month. Questions are answered and input recorded.