GWF does more than dream about the future
GWF feels that if profits generated in rural enterprises were invested into education, it could bring a solution to the problem of unemployment.
Could Hazyview become a mini city of the future, boosting job opportunities and developing the digital marketplace?
This is the question asked by the team at the Good Work Foundation (GWF) following its partnership with Londolozi Private Game Reserve and T-Systems to create the Hazyview Digital Learning Campus (HDLC).
An ecosystem of learning and working in a future African city is exactly what they all had in mind when they teamed up in 2012.
In Mpumalanga and the Hazyview area there is a ceiling on the number of jobs that the wildlife economy can create and in many areas, youth unemployment is as high as 65 per cent.
GWF feels that if profits generated in rural enterprises were invested into education, creating digitally enabled learning for children that focused on cultivating curiosity and developing creativity and critical thinking, it could bring a solution to the problem of unemployment.
The HDLC equips young adults with the skills needed to enter the area’s world-renowned wildlife economy and train them to enter the ICT industry.
In 2016 they created an IT service desk and call centre on campus and positioned it as a rural near-shoring solution. Over the past two years this enterprise has delivered double-digit cost savings to some of South Africa’s largest corporations and staff continue to outperform service level agreements.
This week the foundation announced that the HDLC, the Youth Employment Service (YES) and Investec have teamed up to continue to grow that near-shoring solution. The partnership recruits HDLC’s ICT Academy alumni into a youth-aimed call centre on the Hazyview campus, where YES youth queries can be efficiently handled via telephone, email and LiveChat communication channels.
All profits generated in this enterprise are used to power GWF’s digital learning programmes, including the ICT Academy and an innovative Open Learning Academy that reaches over 6 500 children per week.
This makes talking about an “African city of the future” more than just a dream.
It could provide a gateway city into tourism and ICT that supported skills development, enterprise development, job creation, rural development and, as a happy byproduct, digital on-boarding for local primary schools and access to world-class education for schoolchildren in rural communities.
And this is all happening in and around Hazyview.
