Skills Development

We just kicked off our skills development program! Partnering with a local young adult program, we are now supporting a young woman from Kayamandi who wished to attend a nursing program but didn’t have all of the financial means to do so. We were able to pay a portion of her training program and she is now enrolled and attending nursing school. This will hopefully allow her to flourish in a wonderful and much needed vocation.

Serenity Foundation Apprenticeship Scheme

This project centres on the provision of vocational training for the youth of the township. It will be aimed at those children who are failing to progress at school due to the fact that they are not academically inclined and would therefore benefit from a more practical education. This would allow them to gain the much needed skills for them to build themselves a future and so avoid the inevitable downwards spiral that ends in a turn to crime. Therefore, we are introducing an apprenticeship scheme to partner them with skilled tradesmen such as carpenters, plumbers and electricians.
We envisage this being a 1-2 year program and would look to place two apprentices with each business, although if there is scope for it, we could increase this number. The apprentices would concurrently be educated in a life skills class that will be directly tailored to work ethics and other relevant skills that will be developed in consultation with prospective employers and run by our partner in this venture, Vision K (www.visionk.co.za). There will be an interview process whereby the employer will be able to talk to his prospective apprentices and ensure that they are getting the correct person for the job.

The youths that would benefit from this scheme will be identified through consultation with schools and after-care programs as well as through the use of a tailored psychometric test. This way we can ensure that the correct people are placed in the scheme, as our aim is to provide for those who are not destined to go to university, but will benefit from vocational training.

The scheme will initially be centred in Kayamandi, however, if it proves to be successful, we will expand it to include other townships in the Greater Stellenbosch area.