Vukani-Ubuntu is making it happen

One of South Africas’s leading Non-Governmental Organisatios, Vukani-Ubuntu Community Development Projects, has joined hands with Lincoln-Electric of South Africa, technology leaders in the field of welding, cutting & joining for over 100 years.

Lincoln is co-sponsoring Vukani’s job shop project in eMalahleni, Mpumalanga, which is a unique project and goes a long way towards solving the country’s endemic unemployment problems, particularly in the critical and scarce-skills sector.

Vukani has engaged with a local engineering fabrication SMME facility, FACON Engineering, to create a unique model encompassing the assessment of unemployed work-seekers, practical up-skills training including in scarce and critical skills (industry-specific), On-the-job training in an engineering & manufacturing environment, and the placement of up-skilled job-seekers into gainful employment.

“All Under One Roof This program targets in particular young people, especially young parents, but the primary aim is to capacitate as many women as possible. We aim to break down the barriers that assert that women cannot successfully compete with men in the Artisanal Sectors,” said Virginia Karayiannis of Vukani-Ubuntu.
According to Virginia, 50% of accepted applicants were women for the first Phase. “This is the beginning of a long-term relationship and international partnership between the IDC (largest industrial development organization in Africa), Lincoln-Electric and the EU (European Union) – who is set to donate R6-million this year,” she added.

Lincoln-Electric recently donated a large number of state-of-the-art welding equipment to The Job Shop Project, which was initiated by Vukani-Ubuntu and supported by seed-funding from the IDC, as a beneficiation gesture and in line with their CSI strategy.

“Lincoln Electric has done it again and has proven their commitment to skills and enterprise development within the countries they trade. The first tranche of this equipment has been received and has been put to good use immediately. It is currently used for up-skills training and will go a long way towards contributing to the necessary upskilling of our trainees and increasing their knowledge as coded welders, a much-needed skill in SA,” said Virginia.