Phandulwazi & START Partnership Offers An Effective Systematic Plan For Developing Communities
By Thandisizwe Mgudlwa
CAPE TOWN/South Africa: Phandulwazi Educational & Development Centre has been operating, in Langa, Cape Town
for the past 35 years as a training centre in producing skilled artisans in various fields including sewing, slipper making, electrical repair and leather works to name a few.
After completing the Community Hall in the 1990s, the next face of building reconstruction is to repair the existing two blocks which have 3 rooms each which are used as workshops.
Phandulwazi further plans to construct more workshop buildings in the future on this land and Centre programmes expand into other technical trades.
The Skills Teaching Awareness Resource Training (START) was functioning as a training and production centre for several years at a venue in the Cape Town Business District before it’s closure.
This centre trained unemployed people for sewing, leather, and woodwork industries.
The START Centre incurred cost problems of providing transport and food for its trainee who came from different areas of the metropolitan area.
As a result, and seeing the vast unemployed youth and adults struggling to make a living in their own communities, this Centre preferred to move to a community venue in order to attract local artisans and develop better long-term sustainability which caters to community needs.
Both Phandulwazi and START aim at entrepreneurial and technical training of the most destitute unemployed young adults in the Cape Town township communities.
And for this reason, and because START brought equipment and expertise which will strengthen Phandulwazi’s capacity as a training centre, a merging of the two centres was proposed at the Langa venue which will continue to be called Phandulwazi Centre.
The Centre’s basic aim is to develop trainers and trained artisans who will be able to establish a livelihood in their chosen trade, either in the formal employment sector or in private small businesses.
Also, the training would involve life skills education, job counseling, and placement, and production of goods as product of training.
To a greater expand the former has been achieved over the years through partnerships with groups like Gumtree.
And the latter would provide income to the Centre from the sales of goods produced as well as incentive income to the producer-trainee.
Moreover, the demands fro other townships for similar programmes are vast.
Phandulwazi hopes to extend its training services to these other township centres as requested, so that a mobile system of deploying trainers to these centres can be on-going.
According to Phandulwazi, the new Centre had focused on producing trained expertise in the areas of sewing, leather-craft, pottery making, electronics repair and instillation services in its first phase of development.
Furthermore, the new Centre will develop skills in the management of small enterprises, as well as expand employment opportunities for those who pass through the Centre’s programmes.
To achieve this overall goal, the four objectives of the Phandulwazi are:
- to train in technical trades and entrepreneurial management;
- to produce items according to market demand that produce income for both the individual workers as well as for the Centre;
- to train technical trainers who can continue training at the Centre as ell as train at the satelite centres in other townships, once established; (notably, the satelite centre have been established in other townships in partnership with the City of Cape Town).
- to support trainees in finding employment and establishing their own businesses or cooperatives.
Phandulwazi venue is more is more accessible to Langa residents who wish to develop their own businesses and trades.
Workers, while training, would have that incentive for gaining remuneration from their goods services produced, which, in turn, would influence the sustainability for the Centre.
Workers would also gain expertise in eventually setting up their own business after their training with the support of the Centre.
Phandulwazi also notes that the philosophy of production is one of immediate application of skills: to train people in skills which would be simultaneously used to produce goods for income, so that there is less tag time between the training and income produced.
Phandulwazi management explain, “The trainees, or participants, in the Centre’s programme are people who have the serious desire to gain skills in a technical trade as well as to establish their own businesses or cooperatives.
