SINCE receiving its first start-up grant from the Department of Social Development, the Khanyisa Protective Workplace in Graaff-Reinet has grown in leaps and bounds and has never deferred on its mission to empower the youth from previously marginalised communities with basic life and work skills that will ensure that they are self-reliant and productive citizens after their time at the centre.
The Protective Workplace was officially launched in 2012 and has over the years provided work-related skills training to learners who were either regarded as needing special learning support and those who suffer from mild to average learning disabilities – a condition that makes them not being able to function at a mainstream school.
The programme forms part of Khanyisa Day Care’s broad vision of offering holistic, therapeutic and developmental programmes to youth from Umasizakhe, Kroonvale, Asherville and other informal dwellings in the town.
The learners, who are drawn from the 18 to 35 age group, include men and women from these communities who, to a certain extent, are faced with a bleak future due to unavailability of programmes aimed at equipping them with life skills to enable them to sustain themselves. The centre currently teaches learners the art of crafting and designing leather bags, sandals and leather wallets.
These items are exhibited quarterly in strategic convergence places in town and a plan is being devised by management, under the leadership of project director Bukelwa Booysen, to hold exhibitions at the annual arts festival which is held in June.
According to Booysen, “Our objective, as Khanyisa, is to ensure that every learner is given an opportunity, through skills training, to ensure that he or she becomes a better individual in life regardless of the disability they are faced with.”
The Protective Workplace has a current learner population of 21 learners.
This programme has yielded positive results so far as it became evident when Express visited their showroom, which was packed to the rafters with items and products designed by the learners.
Training facilitator, Busisiwe Selane, commented that, “The youth who are involved in the Protective Workplace are given a second chance and dignity in life as we know the stigma attached to them.
“We are trying our almost best to give them a sense of belonging and ability in order for them to be part of the mainstream and also be able to do things for themselves in sustaining themselves,” she said.
The centre is grateful for the support it has received from local business, Taxidermy SA, which donated 20 bags of leather to ensure that the programme takes off. The programme is currently doing well and is calling on all community members to support their efforts in changing the lives of the many destitute youth in our communities.
For more info call Bukelwa at 079 848 4051 or e-mail bukelwabooysen@gmail.com.
