 The widespread need for basic skills training in many communities in South Africa has, since 1994, been an area in need of massive input and transformation. Increasingly, the private sector and government have cooperated to implement training programs that will fill these skills gaps; and with the growing sophistication of the technology available to improve the effectiveness of these programs, there is an increasing sense of the possibilities around them.
This is where organisations like Footprint, a Johannesburg-based training facilitation company, come in. Footprint formulates and implements training programs on behalf of private companies’ corporate responsibility obligations as well as Government’s development initiatives. Sandi Hattingh of Footprint says, ‘We’ll go into communities and find unemployed women – and some men too –who have the ability to be what we call “peer trainers”’.
These individuals are trained on “train the trainer” courses in Johannesburg, which last for an average of just over two weeks, and are then sent back into their communities to pass on the training to them. ‘We’re giving them skills, and we’re also enabling them to run their own small businesses’, says Hattingh, ‘and they work on a contract basis for us.’ Candidates are paid for every person that they find in their communities that is brought in for training, and if they have administrative skills they can contribute, those are employed too.
Changing lives
On the personal effects of the training provided, Hattingh observes that ‘[people trained in the communities] start finding the most amazing ways of empowering themselves. They start seeing opportunities where we would never see opportunities; they really start seeing ways in which they can build the community up by what they are doing.”
One of Footprint’s main training focuses has been financial literacy training in impoverished communities, which includes basic financial skills such as budgeting and saving, as well as educating people about the various financial regulatory bodies and ombudsmen. The most recent programme in this vein, dubbed “Money fo’ Sho”, had reached almost 8400 people across SA by April this year. While many of the people living in the communities targeted by Footprint are very good at getting by on very little, there is still a great need for training on how to participate in the formal economy.
Another major project with which Footprint has been involved is called Broadreach, an HIV/AIDS education initiative in rural areas. Trainers are given an “HIV mobilisation toolkit”, which they use to educate people in their communities about the causes and prevention of HIV/AIDS, and how to care for people with HIV/AIDS.
Staying in touch
Traditionally, one of the biggest headaches for Hattingh and her colleagues at Footprint was getting effective and accurate feedback about the training taking place once the initial groups of peer trainers had been sent back to their communities. The facilitators tracking the results of the training in the communities found that information about how much training was actually happening, where, and with who, was taking far too long to be processed and logged.
However, Ngikwazi – one of Footprint’s affiliate companies – formulated a cell phone-based feedback system that can be used by anyone with a WAP-enabled phone. By logging on to a site and filling in an online form detailing the date and time, number of people trained and the venue at which training took place (which can often include taxi ranks, clinic waiting rooms and people’s homes), trainers provide instant feedback that can be tracked in real time from anywhere, including the Footprint offices in Johannesburg; this information can then be fed back to clients to provide an accurate picture of what is really happening in these communities, and how many people are being reached by the trainers, thus allowing the training facilitators to work with relevant data in real time.
It is through initiatives like these that Footprint continues to make a difference in underprivileged communities around SA, as they help to give individuals the knowledge and skills with which to change their own lives significantly; this philosophy is reflected in Footprint’s motto: “Reach, Learn, Stand”. With these new skills comes a sense of ownership and empowerment, which drives lasting change far more powerfully than any grant or handout could.
For more information about Footprint go to www.footprintsa.co.za
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