Durban BEST Game (Charity funded training)

Partner(s):

Grassroots communities from various parts of South Africa benefit from SAIE’s business development training administered by Laura Baylis autonomously. Laura Baylis is a free lance instructor involved in the administration of SAIE’s training programmes worldwide. Laura trains members of the community at grass-roots level to learn how to start and run their own businesses. In Point Road, Durban, Laura Baylis conducted BEST Game training on in November and December of 2006. The Durban is an ideal area for entrepreneurship development training. This is because it is a rapidly growing urban area and is one of the busiest ports in Africa with a good rail network linking into Southern Africa. Sugar refining is the main industry. Sheep, cattle, dairy, citrus fruits, corn, sorghum, cotton, bananas, and pineapples are also raised. There is an embryonic KwaZulu-Natal wine industry. In addition to sugar refining, industries (located mainly in and around Durban) include textile, clothing, rubber, fertilizer, paper, vehicle assembly and food-processing plants, tanneries, and oil refineries. There are large aluminum-smelting plants at Richards Bay, on the central coast. The province produces considerable coal (especially coke) and timber. About 82% of the population is black.

Our Involvement:

Beyond the regular, formalized long term programs like BEST Game and BusinessVENTURES, SAIE business development expertise is also leveraged through independent agents as “exclusive projects”. Because of the irregular character of the exclusive projects, they do not have an established, ongoing program implementation mechanism, thus “exclusive projects.” In most cases, independent agents conduct the training after receiving master trainer training from SAIE. In other cases, SAIE service providers and staff may conduct the training on behalf of the firm. The training is usually customized to meet the unique characteristics of the recipient groups.

Project Progress:

In Point Road, the first group was trained from 24th - 25th November & 18th – 19th December while the second group received training from the 29th – 30th November 2007. 7 entrepreneurs completed the training while no facilitators were identified.

The first group of training was quite tough because one person on the training really struggled to get the concepts and then another person got the concepts exceptionally quickly. This meant the facilitator needed to spend much time explaining and re-explaining to the one lady and then try to keep the other person busy with extra problem-solving.

The venue was quite good and actually in a key location but its likely that the reason that we didn’t have more people is that no-one wanted to pay the R40 training fees. In that area many people are used to having hand-outs so now to pay for something they didn’t like the concept.

Then the second group was through an organization that insisted that the organization would pay and not the ladies. This lowered the levels of commitment and the ladies wandered in and out and became untrainable. The training had to be cancelled the CEO called in to speak to them. It was a huge opportunity lost it is because they did not pay that they did not put any value to the training.

Funder:

Product:

Special Projects

Location:

KwaZulu-Natal