Computer courses are changing the lives of Cape Town residents

Over the last eight weeks, 43 community members from Imizamo Yethu and Hangberg attended a basic computer skills course at the Sijongo-Phambili Community Learning Centre in Hout Bay.

About the computer course

Life Manuwe, facilitator and director of Lyfe Computer Technologies says, “There is a massive need in our communities to learn basic computer skills. The interactive computer lessons are a couple of hours a week, where we teach basic Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook skills; skills that many people take for granted.

We want to help our community members to be more employable and through this, we are playing our part to get people into the job market and ultimately to help with poverty alleviation.”

The course forms part of Reputation Matters’ Awesome AfriCAN initiative. It is currently in a pilot phase to work towards empowering our community members with computer skills.

“At Reputation Matters, we specialise in reputation research. We often need to conduct fieldwork and depending on the research assignment, we also need to manually capture data. We saw this as a great opportunity to involve members of the communities in which we work,” says Regine le Roux, managing director of Reputation Matters.

“Many members in our communities have not had an opportunity to learn basic computer skills yet; so before we can start with data capturing, we needed to take a step back and get people trained up to be confident in front of a computer,” adds le Roux.

The AfriCAN initiative

The Awesome AfriCAN initiative looks at empowering community members, not just in Hout Bay, but also the rest of Cape Town, the Western Cape, South Africa and even the rest of the continent!

“We have an amazing continent, we need to empower our people to get into the job market, which will stimulate the economy on a micro level and ultimately, the bigger picture, to stimulate the economy across the continent. We are currently busy with a similar project in Saldanha Bay,” continues le Roux.

The next part of the computer training is to incorporate coding, as well as sessions such as job readiness sessions, for example, how to write a CV, how to prepare for a job interview, and of course, data capturing. The initiative will also look at incorporating a course on entrepreneurship development, a key component to job creation in our communities.

How you can help

“The course has been offered at no fee to the community members. To be able to continue with offering these classes we need funding. We are incredibly grateful for the generous sponsorships that we have received to make this pilot a reality and to train up these dedicated 43 participants,” explains Manuwe.

Le Roux adds, “We did not want to start a new non-profit organisation, there are more than enough in Hout Bay! Instead, we are working with Rotary to help manage the funds we receive from sponsorship because we know that the funds are 100% accounted for each project it is assigned to. Also, as we expand into Africa, Rotary is one of the most credible organisations with a footprint across the continent.”

Sponsoring an individual will cost R 550.00 per person for a four-week course. Classes are dedicated to 15 people at a time and the classes run from 09:00 to 12:00; 13:00 to 14:00 Tuesday to Thursday.

If you are able to help, or would like to get involved with this initiative, please contact Regine le Roux at awesome@reputationmatters.co.za | 083 302 1528 or Life Manuwe at lifemanuwe@lyfecomputertechnologies.co.za | 07182812221