Women burning with ambition to excel

NELSPRUIT – As part of the government funded Working on Fire (WoF) Programme’s ambitious plan to create more leadership opportunities for women in the veld and forest fire fighting industry in South Africa,32 women veld and forest fire fighters are currently undergoing an intensive “All-female Crew Leader” training course in Nelspruit.

This course started on September 20 2013 and will continue until the November 1 2013. The women will officially be handed their certificates, which certifies that they have successfully completed the course next week on Monday, by Ms Rejoice Thizwilondi Mabudafhasi, Deputy Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs.

WoF is a leading job-creation and poverty alleviation programme and recruits and trains young people into becoming professional veld and forest fire fighters. These fire fighters comes from marginalized communities and WoF provides them with fire awareness and education, prevention and fire suppression skills. There are currently more than 5 000 beneficiaries in the Programme, 85% of whom are youth, 32% are women – the highest level in any comparable fire service in the world.

According to Trevor Abrahams, Managing Director of FFA Operations, the company that implements the Working on Fire Programme on behalf of government, “the All-female Crew Leader Course” has been specifically designed to provide intensive training to women fire fighters on advanced veld and forest fire fighting and also teaches them fire line supervision skills and critical health and safety procedures which they will need to lead a fire fighting team.”

“We train these women to become motivated fire fighters who are able to operate safely and efficiently and we also teach them key leadership skills which gives them the ability to lead a professional fire fighting team in dangerous and unpredictable work environments”, Abrahams said.

Abrahams further said, “The WoF Training Academy has afforded many young women the opportunity not only to become highly sought after veld and forest fire fighters, but it has also trained them in acquiring important life skills which they can use to seek employment beyond the WoF programme”.

“Once they have completed this course, these women will be put on an intensive three month mentoring period at their bases throughout South Africa where they will be expected to also lead their teams in fire suppression, prescribed burning and fire awareness education related activities”, he added.