Economic Growth South Africa Project #8175

Employability training - Unemployed South Africans

by FUNDI

Project Report | Jan 5, 2012
Update on Employability training

By Peter Kratz | Director

Employability training Cape Town

2011 was the first year in which we had a full year of training on the employability program. More than 2,000 people participated in the program. When we created the training we included an evaluation tool which participants complete before they start training and then at some point whilst in training and finally after all the modules are completed.

The focus of the program is to build skills which we refer to as soft skills, we are trying to get people to change behaviors and shift perspective. The evaluation covers the individual’s attitude or feelings about how they approach work, how they communicate, are they reliable and organised, how they relate to customers and are they ready to deliver excellent service. They provide a self evaluation at each stage with a low score of 1 and a high score of 6.

Participant reported a change in score from an average of 3.5 to 4.9 which reflects a significant reported shift in mind set. There has also been a significant impact on our members average evaluation score while working. There is still much work to be done to reach a broader audience and to deliver the program repeatedly so as to improve its impact.

Permalink

Aug 30, 2011
MSR Progress Report August 2011

By Peter Kratz | Director

Progress Report from: Men on the Side of the Road Project

1. Introduction

Our principal objectives for 2011 are summarized below;

Build towards self sustainability through

Improved management of our Fundraising pipeline
Building relationships with DOL, Social Development and local municipal authorities.
Develop our access to personal donors
Build reserves through investment in Job creation projects.

It was recognised in that these are multi year initiatives and in the case of the last 2 points are subject to the availability of either specific funds for the purpose or uncommitted funds. These activities are aimed at getting MSR to the point where its annual budget is assured.

In respect of operational activities we planned to

Get all regions to complete the implementation of our fee based business model aimed at achieving financial sustainability.
Place 102,000 thousand work days in 2011. This implied an almost 50% increase on the 2010 final result.
Earn R 1.5 million on the placement and service teams operations

2. Activities and accomplishments

Fundraising

Despite organising our fundraising management in a more structured way we have come up against some stern challenges this year. The stop / start funding from Gauteng provincial social development has created a large gap in our 2011 funding pipeline. This is exacerbated by the delayed approval of funding from a normally reliable foundation overseas. These 2 entities accounted for almost 50% of our funding in 2010 and look like providing nothing this year. It must be emphasised that there are no concerns from their side in respect of MSR, they have simply been unable to approve resources due to internal issues.

We also received a notification from the National Lottery Trust Fund that our 2011 application was rejected because we run a job placement program which they regard as a recruitment agency and therefore they can not fund us. We have appealed that decision and the Board of the fund has referred the matter back to the grant committee for re-evaluation.

We have continued to receive ongoing support from several funders and remain appreciative of all the foundations and organisations that contribute to the success of MSR.

Self sustainability

Our fee based model has now been introduced to all regions in which we operate and will begin to move our placement program towards self sustainability. We have also moved ahead with the Service Team program which sees organised teams of MSR members providing sub contracting services in the construction industry. We expect to exceed the target of R1.5 million income in the full year.

Placement program

The target for 2011 was set to stretch the branches. The traditional markets in which we have placed people in the past remain depressed. Domestic construction and maintenance indices have continued to show no improvement after the dramatic drops experienced in early 2010. All this adds up to extreme hardship for our members.

Overall MSR has placed 19,687 work days in 2011 (to 30 June) this represents a 35% decrease on the same period last year. The financial value of these work days to members is approximately R2.6 million.

3. Training

This year we extended out employability training program to all regions where we operate and have trained more than 4,800 people. The course is designed to develop soft skills in our members.

Links:

Permalink

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.