Laudium BEST Game (Charity funded training)

Partner(s):

Communities from various parts of South Africa benefit from SAIE’s business development training administered by Laura Baylis autonomously. Laura Baylis is a freelance 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 this project, Laura trains entrepreneurs from Laudium in Gauteng. Laudium is a township in Centurion (City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality), South Africa. BEST game training can go a long way to assist entrepreneurs to break new ground in business.

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:

Between 9/10 April and 29/30 April 2008, Laura Baylis administered BEST Game training to 4 trainers.

Laura tried a few times to arrange a second group in the area to be trained. This seemed to be unsuccessful due to people committing and then pulling out last minute.

It may be worth to only finalise the training in the future there once a significant number have registered and paid their training costs, this way they are more likely to remain committed to the course.

Even though we ran the training with less than 6 people here there was still a good fun atmosphere and on one day we had 3 people come and have a look-in so got them involved also. The one lady who came to see the training is hoping to get the training run in Eastern Cape when her family moves there.

It is amazing at how many learning points are taught even whilst playing this game. It is good to see people start with limited understanding of what is involved in a small business and then take on so many new concepts during the training. There is always a huge difference in the people between where they are at, at end of module 4 compared to where they are at during module 1. This is such an encouragement to me as the facilitator and to them as they see they are learning.

Each trainee in this group did well in their practical business. They all made a profit but also learnt from the experience and I think a few of them will continue on with their businesses to raise extra finance for the future. ners.

Funder:

Product:

Special Projects

Location:

Gauteng