The old Grahamstown train station has become home to an unexpectedly successful enterprise. The Hospitality Youth Initiative (HYI) which occupies the old building educates youth for success in the hotel and hospitality industry. HYI has placement rate as high as 67%.
The old Grahamstown train station has become home to an unexpectedly successful enterprise. The Hospitality Youth Initiative (HYI) which occupies the old building educates youth for success in the hotel and hospitality industry. HYI has placement rate as high as 67%.
Started in 1998 by current CEO, Duncan Peltason and Education Training Director Sue Bursey, HYI works to prepare successful applicants as waiters, front of house staff, night hotel auditors and sous chefs in hotels countrywide.
Prospective students applying for the programme need to pass a rigorous selection process. The course is a testing, six-month process spent over a combination of in-class training in Grahamstown and practical work experience.
Students spend the first month in Grahamstown, learning practical skills and attending a course in self discovery.
The vision statement of HYI is that attitude is everything, sentiments echoed by Peltason who says, “If you change perception, attitudes change accordingly.”
After the course, students must spend just over a month a small business in their home districts which must make at least R650 to pass.
Budding entrepreneurs
Peltason says that there have been many instances in this stage of the programme where students have managed to start enterprises profitable enough to distract them from continuing with the main programme.
Those continuing to the final stages of the programme find placements at many of HYI’s hotel partners, including major hotel chains such as Southern Sun, Protea Hotels, City Lodge Group and Hyatt.
Here they learn the practical skills of the hospitality industry before graduating and frequently being employed by the same organisations.
Peltason explains that the programme has remained small over the years, “We don’t want to focus on quantity over quality”.
Nevertheless, the programme has attracted increasing interest from all quarters, including the Swiss government and South African organisations hoping to harness the secret of their exceptional placement rate to develop similar programmes further afield.
