Grocott's Mail
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Cue
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Trending
  • In the words of Nelson Mandela, “To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity”
  • Flooding at the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works
  • Avbob 2023 Poetry Competition Second Place: Jeannie Wallace McKeown
  • Avbob 2023 Poetry Competition Winner: Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana
  • Residents of Extensions Nine, 10, Transit Camp, Phumlani and Enkanini voice discontent!
  • Makhanda Creatives Speak Out
  • Running towards a drug and alcohol-free Makhanda
  • What’s On 23 – 30 March
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Grocott's Mail
  • NEWS
    • Courts & Crime
    • Features
    • Politics
    • People
    • Health & Well-being
  • SPORT
    • News
    • Results
    • Sports Diary
    • Club Contacts
    • Columns
    • Sport Galleries
    • Sport Videos
  • OPINION
    • Election Connection
    • Makana Voices
    • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
    • Newtown… Old Eyes
    • Incisive View
    • Your Say
  • ARTSLIFE
    • Cue
    • Makana Sharp!
    • Visual Art
    • Literature
    • Food & Fun
    • Festivals
    • Community Arts
    • Going Places
  • OUR TOWN
    • What’s on
    • Spiritual
    • Emergency & Well-being
    • Safety
    • Civic
    • Municipality
    • Weather
    • Properties
      • Grahamstown Properties
    • Your Town, Our Town
  • OUTSIDE
    • Enviro News
    • Gardening
    • Farming
    • Science
    • Conservation
    • Motoring
    • Pets/Animals
  • ECONOMIX
    • Business News
    • Entrepreneurship
    • Personal Finance
  • EDUCATION
    • Education NEWS
    • Education OUR TOWN
    • Education INFO
  • Covid-19
  • EDITORIAL
Grocott's Mail
You are at:Home»Uncategorized»Former pupils prove dream employees
Uncategorized

Former pupils prove dream employees

Grocott's MailBy Grocott's MailAugust 25, 2011No Comments4 Mins Read
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

Five years ago, Rhodes University caterers were in a fix. They had a high staff turnover and had difficulty finding the right kinds of people to work in their kitchen. What they needed were people who could follow basic instructions, work well with others and were loyal.

And they found all these qualities in Luthando Ntile and Xoliswa Mbiza – two Kuyasa Special School pupils they hired to work in one of the dining halls.

Five years ago, Rhodes University caterers were in a fix. They had a high staff turnover and had difficulty finding the right kinds of people to work in their kitchen. What they needed were people who could follow basic instructions, work well with others and were loyal.

And they found all these qualities in Luthando Ntile and Xoliswa Mbiza – two Kuyasa Special School pupils they hired to work in one of the dining halls.

Their internship and subsequent employment proved so successful that now the university wants to expand the Kuyasa internship programme.

Rhodes is now set to employ 15 pupils from the school in its housekeeping section, the sewing room, grounds and gardens, engineering division and day care centre.

Riana Henning, from human resources together with Jay Pillay, the head of food services, approached Kuyasa Special School principal, Jill Rothman, five years ago with the idea of employing intellectually impaired individuals.

The programme consists of a one-year internship on a "shadowing" basis, where individuals are assigned junior and senior mentors. It's a system which has helped transform their lives and provide them with permanent employment.

For Ntile and Mbiza, the project’s first interns, it was important that an enabling and nurturing environment be created where they would not be stigmatised. They were assigned to St Mary’s kitchen, a smaller dining hall staffed by more mature men and women, to provide a comfortable working environment.

Pillay Ntile and Mbiza were allocated junior mentors – someone they could partner with to learn the job and acquire skills.

Kuyasa School focuses on domestic, practical and life skills. The Rhodes staff involved with the internship provide further life-skills training, such as budgeting, looking after one's family, relationships and HIV awareness.

Pillay described the progress of another intern in the programme, Lezelle Breedt, of Pretoria. She is currently doing her internship at Kimberly dining hall.

“When she started here she was all nervous and couldn't string together a sentence,” said Pillay.

A few months down the line, Lezelle’s English had improved remarkably and her confidence had grown. Pillay said the programme offered more than just employment, providing the interns with skills that could be put into practice in their everyday lives.

“And that is really how the programme has taken off. We have created employment,” says Pillay explaining how the programme had expanded into the housekeeping section, the sewing room, grounds and gardens, engineering and the Rhodes Day Care Centre.

Intellectually impaired people were stigmatised, Pillay said, and some people believed they were incapable of completing certain tasks. They were often overlooked by businesses and organisations in the broader community.

Pillay’s MA thesis uses this project as a case study and shows how the internship programme can be replicated and used in other businesses and organisations.

She says that more pressure is being placed on companies to report on their corporate social investment and corporate social responsibility, and her research could present opportunities for other companies to incorporate individuals who were intellectually impaired.

She believes that when big organisations consider "equity", their core focus is on issues such as empowering women and on eliminating racial discrimination.

“I feel people with disabilities should actually fall in the same category,” Pillay said.

She said the programme had not begun as a community engagement exercise, however.

“What it started off as was a retention strategy, our looking at retaining people. But what it has done is created an opportunity for community engagement,” Pillay said.

Previous ArticleTackling Aids from the top
Next Article Business body promises local support
Grocott's Mail

Comments are closed.

Tweets by Grocotts
Newsletter



Listen

The Rhodes University Community Engagement Division has launched Engagement in Action, a new podcast which aims to bring to life some of the many ways in which the University interacts with communities around it. Check it out below.

Humans of Makhanda

Humans of Makhanda

Weather    |     About     |     Advertise     |     Subscribe     |     Contact     |     Support Grocott’s Mail

© 2023 Maintained by School of Journalism & Media Studies.

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.