An Awesome AfriCAN initiative by Reputation Matters

Regine le Roux managing director of Reputation Matters, has just finished a Skype call with Joseph Bernard where he was sharing his screen with her and discussing a website he was working on. Skype, sharing of a screen, a computer, all pretty basic right? For Regine, it was a moment of utter pride and a realisation that they were we are onto something wonderful with their Awesome AfriCAN initiative. You see, a year ago, Joseph who lives in Imizamo Yetho (IY) in Hout Bay, had no computer skills, ‘Word’ was something that formed part of a sentence and ‘Excel’ something you did at school and on the sports field.
Investing in the community and being a responsible corporate citizen, is a key building block that Reputation Matters measures as part of their reputation research methodology to quantify organisations reputations. “This is an area that has always been important for us especially in terms of the type of projects that we take on,” says le Roux. “But we never really had our own Corporate Social Investment (CSI) program in place, even though we invested our own time in different areas, it wasn’t very strategic. It was important for me to find something that linked to our core business of research. However, to be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how to link our work, predominantly in cyberspace to our local community, but knew there had to be a way,” shares le Roux.
Although most of the research projects are done via online surveys; Reputation Matters has seen an influx of corporates who want to understand their relationship with stakeholder groups that don’t necessarily have access to technology to complete an online questionnaire. In those instances, good old traditional paper-based surveys are used. “With one such a project, we had a significant amount of paper-based forms that needed to be manually captured. I turned to the local running club that I belong to where one of the development runners had asked me for quite some time whether I had some work for him. I then saw this data capturing as an excellent opportunity to get him on board,” explains le Roux. “Unfortunately, it came to the fore that he had no computer skills, he indicated that he never had an opportunity to learn this skill and even though he had been to the library to try and teach himself he just did not know where to start. I then realised that computer literacy was where we had to start. Before we could involve the community with data capturing, we had to take a step back and provide computer skills,” adds le Roux.
If one does not have access to computers or basic computer skills, you are cut off from so many opportunities, especially when it comes to writing and sending out a CV.
Le Roux continues, “I’m a proponent to work with the community in which you live and work, so my focus has been Hout Bay. With the help of said runner, he helped me to find the most amazing computer facility next to IY and I met Life Manuwe, SETA accredited computer facilitator. Unfortunately, this wonderful computer centre was being underutilised due to the lack of local support. The classes can’t be run for free, and overheads need to be covered, it’s unrealistic to ask community members to pay for a computer course if they are living hand to mouth. We worked together on a program and I helped Life to generate sponsorships for a pilot project; I will be forever grateful to these generous sponsors. I did not want to start a new foundation or Trust, there are already far too many in our Republic of Hout Bay. We therefore work closely with Rotary International to manage any sponsorships and funding that we receive for the computer classes; keeping things transparent is non-negotiable.”
In October last year, the first pilot project kicked off providing the group with free accredited computer classes. All 43 candidates that signed up completed the course. It was a proud moment when they received their certificates!
Sea Harvest Foundation and the West Coast Business Development Centre (WCDC) in Saldanha got to hear about the initiative, and Reputation Matters’ Awesome AfriCAN initiative was rolled out as a pilot project there as well. Their requirement was to train up 15 small businesses because part of the challenge that small businesses are faced with, is that they can’t access corporates and vice versa, because they don’t have computer skills, they send quotes via WhatsApp, which unfortunately automatically disqualifies them as they are not registered on the supplier data bases that often require a stack of paper work to be submitted electronically. An added incentive of attending the course was that each small business owner would receive their own website! These websites have been built by guys like Joseph that attended our pilot computer class last year.
Ten people have already found permanent employment because of the additional skills that they have gained through the basic computer courses.
“We want to increase the number of computer classes this year and to expand it to other areas of the country. The big audacious goal is to expand this across the continent!” shares le Roux.
If companies would like to sponsor websites for entrepreneurs, they are not just supporting the entrepreneur and small business development, which has a direct impact on our economy, they are also creating a much needed job opportunity for someone in our townships.
If anyone would like to get involved in the Awesome AfriCAN initiative, please do get in touch with Regine le Roux on research@reputationmatters | +27 83 302 1528 or +27 21 790 0208.
Reputation Matters is also on Facebook www.facebook.com/yourreputationmatters and Twitter @ReputationIsKey.