Annual Report 2004

Business Skills and Development Centre

Annual Report for 2004

Location, location, location!

One of the exciting changes in 2004 has been BSDC's move to Salt River, which physically merged the Training division of BSDC with the Youth Advisory Centre. These two primary areas of BSDC had been at separate locations since 2002, and the move to Salt River has been a wonderful re-establishment of relationships and consolidation of the BSDC team. Who's who:

The year 2004 sadly saw us saying goodbye to our long-standing Manager, Barbara Jones, who left to pursue her own business interests. Cathy Clarke, a founder member of BSDC who has been on the Board of Directors since 1987, was appointed in this role as an interim measure. A new manager, Celiwe Ngwenya, has been appointed as from February 2005. She joined us in May 2004 as a typing teacher and remained for the July to December course teaching, IT, typing, Office Practice, Drama and began assisting with fund-raising. Her background in education and management as well as her rapport with students and staff, persuaded us all that she was the most appropriate candidate for the position. Cathy Clarke will remain on in a consulting role as projects manager for the myriad new opportunities which have opened up for BSDC during 2004 and continues on the Board of Directors.

Wendi Wise has continued teaching IT and has begun an intensive phase of IT development using Open Source in her additional role as IT manager. Lisa Willson does a wonderful job teaching office practice and the ever-popular life skills course with an attention to detail and creative methodology that captures the hearts and minds of the students. Marlene Wolhuter, the bookkeeping and entrepreneurship teacher has her mettle tested with every course. The students generally resist her subjects but she patiently cajoles, coaches and explains and before long we have students who are achieving 80% + in their accounting assessments, and a host of small businesses many of which are going concerns by the end of the course. Accreditation and registration:

A significant achievement this year is that all of our staff who completed the Assessors course are now registered assessors: Wendy Wise, Marlene Wolhuter, Lisa Willson, Cathy Clarke. Henriette Abrahams and Celiwe Ngwenya completed the course later in 2004 and await results of the submission of their Portfolios of evidence. Wendy, Marlene and Lisa have also completed the Moderators course, with results awaited in March 2005.

BSDC is an accredited service provider and submitted a variety of unit standards in June 2004 for accreditation of our learning programmes. We have yet to receive the results of this submission! Finances and fund-raising:

BSDC has had a difficult year from a financial perspective. The staff went through a period of a few months where they were to all intents and purposes, volunteering their time, as salaries were unable to be paid. The reasons for this included:

• a problematic time in fund-raising as criteria in some instances were changing;
• there was an unexpectedly long delivery time between grants made and funds being received from some funders;
• the move to Salt River required extra financial input at a level that had not been budgeted for due to unexpected repairs and maintenance to be done
• furniture for the students required replacing
• many of our old computers had to be 'retired'
• the telephone system we inherited gave many problems and required money and counseling!

Nonetheless, with the assistance of SSACI, Caltex, Vodacom, Standard Bank Foundation, The Nelson Mandela Childrens' Fund, Breadline and Foschini, we scraped through our year-end into what promises to be a much better year in 2005. SSACI, Breadline, FNB Trust, Pick n' Pay and Anglo American, have come to the table early in the year with generous funding, and though we still have a fair way to go, we are feeling really positive about the financial situation for 2005. We are immensely grateful to all our funders who have shown faith in our mission and offered not only money, but their generous advice and assistance in good times and bad! Johannesburg trip:

As part of the drive to raise BSDC's profile and manage relationships with funders better, Wendi and Cathy went on a two-day trip to Johannesburg. The aim was to visit the major funders, hold discussions with some of the big computer organizations and source new funders. It was an intensely full but rewarding trip generously paid for by METROPOLITAN, with drivers provided by SA EAGLE and MANDATE MOLEFE to render us stress-free as regards navigation! We successfully made many interesting new contacts which have proved really valuable and met with Ken Duncan from SSACI who is always serenely willing to provide guidance and assistance. Our graduates:

Two groups graduated this year, one of 46 and one of 48. Of the 46 businesses started in the first half of the year, 22 were going concerns by the end of the course! Of the 48 businesses started during the second half of the year, 20 were going concerns by February 2005. This is no small feat on the part of the students and of course Marlene, who has walked the long road with our budding entrepreneurs. One of the most heart-warming results of being involved with BSDC is watching how a group of anxious students can literally blossom in front of your eyes, as they encounter their strengths, uncover new talents and explore all kinds of undreamed of possibilities for the future. Please see appendix 1 for results for the year.

The Youth Advisory Centre is working hard at finding placement for these 2004 graduates, with 8 already placed, 10 in their own small businesses and many going on interviews. It opens up!

Wendy has been teaching typing and IT at BSDC for years but with the move to Salt River in April and the need for re-inventing our Computer lab, Wendy's time has been unavoidably taken up with IT management and systems administration. She initiated setting up a new computer resource laboratory which has been funded by Caltex and Foschini with support from the Shuttleworth Foundation.

The open source computer laboratory, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, was fully operational for the July to December 2004 course. Open source has proved its credentials as a learner-friendly system accommodating nervous fingers and technology tension in a way we have never seen before. Not only that, but the learners have found they convert to other software with ease.

The computer resource centre for allowing our ex-students and small business entrepreneurs access to computer facilities, internet and email will be operational by 16 February 2005. Everything but the cabling is in place due to: the 2004 funding crisis and our volunteer technicon students writing exams.

We have received valuable hands-on assistance from Hamish Whittall, MD of QED technologies and Omar, a project manager from Hewlett Packard in planning and setting up the laboratory. Between them, they have donated vast amounts of their time and expertise to BSDC and we are eternally grateful for their encouragement and guidance. As I'm writing this, Wendi and Hamish are standing at opposite ends of a very long cable, armed with the traditional weapons of the IT trade (screwdrivers and pliers), frowning and muttering darkly …. Youth Advisory Centre:

Xoliswa, Zikhona and Elaine have had their entire world upended with the move to Salt River. They have continued with:

• placement of the graduated students
• confidence building workshops

In addition, they now do:

• marketing
• community outreach
• mentoring small businesses in conjunction with Marlene
• recruiting new students for the new courses
• plan and run the 2 week orientation of the students
• arrange the graduation ceremony.

They made 37 direct placements of ex-students during 2004. This does not include those of our students who may have been assisted in job-hunting techniques, but found their own employment.

We have begun asking organizations (except other NGO's) who do not formally fund BSDC, to contribute a small donation should we place staff with them. With a few exceptions, there has been a positive response to this initiative. Where it looks as if placing the student is at risk due to this request, we are prepared to negotiate, reiterating that our goal is to help those job-hunting students to get work.

Zikhona and Xoliswa have spent more time visiting external organizations this year, in order to consolidate existing relationships and develop new ones. Some of the workshadow participating companies have been personally visited, and we firmly intend to visit as many as possible during 2005 when 80 organisations will be required to accommodate this year's intake. Staff growth:

During the latter half of 2004, Carl Hendricks and Neville Prinsloo of Ithaca Consulting services sponsored and ran 2 half day EQ workshops for BSDC staff, directors and interested companies. We so enjoyed learning more about ourselves (and each other!), in a relaxed environment, with no work agenda except to enjoy!

As already mentioned, the teachers have completed assessor and moderator training and we await the results of the latter. Wendi passed her 2nd year ABET diploma exams during 2004. She also completed Java Programming for teachers.

Zikhona completed her Labour Recruitment Learnership and has had the contract extended for 6 months to allow the Services Seta to arrange summative assessments. Xoliswa signed the contract to be on Labour Recruitment Learnership from July 2004, but shortly thereafter, the SETA informed us they were no longer going to be offering the theoretical part of the programme! We await developments in this regard, but our challenge now, is to find a service provider to offer the training to support Xoliswa's practical exposure at BSDC.

Wendi ran an open source spreadsheet course for some of the staff, and this type of training will be continued during 2005. Into 2005! The only constant is change!

Emthonjeni (the bridging course)

For years now, the students coming through BSDC have indicated they'd love to have the opportunity to spend more time at the centre to acquire more skills and really strengthen both their employability and/or their capacity to run their own businesses successfully. Many of our students have struggled to find employment as the increasingly competitive market is demanding a much higher level of skill. Fortunately they have their small businesses to fall back on, but even in this area the competition is huge and they need more advanced skills. After much research and consultation, we have now increased the course to 10 months with a student intake of 80 from February. The first 7 months of the new improved course will consist of intensive input into our usual subjects: IT/Typing, Life Skills, Business Communication, Bookkeeping, Entrepreneurship and Office Practice. There will be 5 weeks of workshadow after which they will return to the centre to complete electives.

Electives:

A process of consultation will allow both learners and staff to evaluate which elective will best suit individual learners. The electives are: Entrepreneurship, Call centres, reception/secretarial work or computer end-user computing. The electives will be run by our current teachers and aim to provide the opportunity to specialize and strengthen skills. Our call centre training partner, Melanie Bailes of Insight Call centre, will run the call centre elective.

Emthonjeni - Part-time:

We have had many requests from youths who have jobs, for a part-time bridging course to offer them office and computer skills. We currently have 25 youths on a waiting list for a part-time course that we are hoping to run from April 2005. Details later. Projects:

Call centres:

In line with the growing demand for call centre staff, we formed a partnership with Insight Call centre, an NGO training in this field and ran a 2 week pilot project training 14 of our ex-students. It was entirely funded by Trans-Union, and the students enjoyed it tremendously with a few already placed in call centers. What has emerged from that experience is the decision to run a call centre elective in October for the 2005 intake of students (see previous paragraph). Considering the numbers of call centre staff that will be required and the lack of new operators coming onto the market, we have also initiated an entirely separate 2 month call centre training programme as a joint venture with Insight, to offer a month of BSDC-type basic training followed by a month of Insight's call centre training. Students will be specifically sponsored by existing call centres and recruitment agencies that will be involved in the upfront selection according to agreed upon criteria.

Entrepreneurship:

To encourage our ex-student entrepreneurs, as well as others in the community who may need it, we offer workshops on a variety of relevant topics with relevant guest speakers. What has become apparent is that these small business people need administrative assistance and a place where they can do research, and send emails. To this end, our open source computer resource centre has been made available to upcoming entrepreneurs to run their accounts, access the internet and communicate via email.

Recruitment:

We have formed a partnership with a recruitment agency to:

• become involved in the contact centre training
• provide assistance to train BSDC placement officers
• assisting with external company contact for YAC
• placing the learners once their courses are complete whether that is the formal 1 year BSDC course or the 2 month contact centre intervention.

We are working on two further partnerships in the recruitment area:

• a joint venture to provide training for the labour recruitment learnership
• a joint venture to do a large recruitment project, finding learners to take up learnerships within the insurance sector.

Open source:

We have received overwhelming support from some of the big names in the computer industry (as mentioned earlier), for our pioneering open source laboratory. Contrary to popular myth, the system is stable and is standing up very few problems, and no downtime, even in the initial stages. Website and wireless internet connectivity:

Our website is up and running (bsdc.org.za) and will be updated with learner information, progress reports and upcoming events on a regular basis. In line with global trends, we are busy setting up wireless connectivity in order to further cut costs. This should be complete by 11 March 2005.

Cathy Clarke

Manager - 2004

Tracking for ex-students from 2003