BYLINE: Workplace Staff
Local human solution specialists KLM Empowered was recently awarded the Gold Assegai Award in the individual and company awards category for 'Direct Marketing Education and Training Investment'.
The Assegai Awards are hosted annually by the Direct Marketing Association (DMASA) and are the premier awards for the direct marketing industry, recognising excellence in multi-channel direct response marketing among agencies, corporates, educational institutions and SMEs.
'We are delighted with the award, it adds impetus to the work we have been doing among the underprivileged in our country, and encourages us to grow and improve our efforts into the future,' says Lyn Mansour, CEO of KLM Empowered.
KLM Empowered received the award on the back of a national contract it received from the DMASA to train 500 unemployed youth from all parts of rural South Africa, providing them with valuable training and life skills in and around the marketing industry.
The project was the brainchild of DMASA CEO Brian Mduli, whose vision is to nurture talent in communities that have had no access to this kind of training.
The training hinged around the Services Seta's Customer Management (NQF 4) and was commissioned by the DMASA as part of its vision to build future Marketing Ambassadors for South Africa.
The project was completed in September 2009 and achieved a 93 percent success rate. The learners came from rural areas across South Africa and had very little means available to them.
According to Mansour KLM's role was to provide training, act as business and life coaches, as well as extra mural trainers to the students.
'The vision of the programme was to not only offer invaluable training to these youngsters, but also to present them with the opportunity to learn how to work in a team and unlock leadership potential among them,' adds Mansour.
'We developed courseware that taught management and self management skills, and then provided a host of extra mural activities to encourage team work, camaraderie and, most importantly, the ability to have fun while learning.'
As part of the extra mural element of the programme the learners were encouraged to initiate and develop choirs. Mansour says the rationale of which was to introduce the notion that music unites people from all walks of life and that everyone has their own individual rhythm, and, when married together, these individual beats can make a beautiful musical harmony.
When translated into a business ethic the concept is that different ideas can be the foundation of winning projects and businesses.
The success of the choirs is evident in the nomination of the choirs from Kimberly in the Northern Cape, Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, Durban in KwaZulu-Natal and Alice in the Eastern Cape, to participate in the Services Seta's Learnership Conference hosted in Port Elizabeth in October. The DMASA and KLM Empowered choirs were acknowledged for their outstanding efforts.
Learnerships often lack one vital element - having fun. It is with this in mind that the DMSA hosted round robin sports tournaments through the course of the year. The KLM learners took first and runner up place overall for soccer, as well as first place overall for netball.
'Learning is the greatest gift that can be given to anyone, and our goal with this programme was to not only provide business skills, but also to instil a sense of ownership and pride amongst the young lives we touched,' says Mansour.
'In addition, we focused on teaching them to be entrepreneurial and most importantly, that the skills we imparted would help build on a sustainable future for each learner.
'This award is a wonderful celebration to round up the successful completion of a fantastic project. One of the greatest successes of this project for all of us at KLM Empowered has definitely been the ongoing impact we have had, and hope to have, on the lives of the young people we worked with. This has been priceless.'
