Out of the Box to close its doors

Germiston-based Out of the Box Skills Development Centre (OTB) will be forced to close its doors permanently unless it receives sponsorship within the next month.

Founder Nina Venjakob said the situation is dire.

“We have been teaching disadvantaged people skills for more than 20 years, but our regular sponsors have been bought out by foreign companies and all sponsorship has been cancelled.

“Unless we receive a miracle, we’ll be forced to shut shop,” she said.

Out of the Box is based at The Pavilion in Refinery Road and provides skills, hope and opportunities to disadvantaged, unskilled and uneducated South Africans, enabling them to find sustainable income- generating opportunities.

OTB not only skills people; students are assisted after their training to set up their own small business or teaching facility, or helped to find a job.

“In this way,” said Nina, “they can not only feed their families but often employ people from their own communities, train them, and employ them, passing on the skills in the spirit of Ubuntu.

“We have skilled close on 2 000 people and there are seven people with their own screen-printing businesses and about 60 people who learnt computer skills and found jobs.

“We have lots of sewing students who have found jobs in small factories and some of the woodworkers are in construction making roof trusses.”

She added, “Business and life skills are woven into each and every course.

“We do not teach with SETA modules as the majority of our students are illiterate and would be unable to cope with the SETA system.

“Instead we concentrate on hands-on teaching methods, which have proved successful.”

With the OTB centre currently situated in Germiston, they work closely with local communities, with most of their students coming from informal settlements such as Good Hope informal settlement, but maintain contact with around 112 informal settlements.

“As part of our sustainability programme we form core groups of graduated students at the centre and obtain work contracts for them such as CMT (cut, make and trim) work for the graduated sewing students, woodwork contracts for the graduated carpenters, and so on.

“These core groups also produce their own work, which we market on their behalf through the internet, fairs, exhibitions, corporate gifting requests and individual weekend markets.

“Small businesses are started and run through the centre, creating permanent jobs for the community,” said Nina.

As a registered Section 21, registered NPO, registered PBO, OTB can offer sponsors and donors tax savings and great BBBEE and ED scores.

OTB is also an EME at Level 2.

“We have had such amazing support from sponsors and donors up to now.

“But I literally don’t know where to turn from here on.

“We desperately need help to continue our work and help people out of misery and poverty.

“They want to work. They want to learn.

“They want to secure the future of their children.

“We can’t give up now,” Nina said.

For more information or to get involved call Nina on 083-583-5383, 011 872-0967/8 or email to nina@outofthebox.org.za.