A Beacon of Hope in the Community
2 October, 2017
The Orlando Pirates Learning Center continues to assist unemployed youth and under privileged children in acquiring skills that will help them with getting employment and better their skills at school. Over the past year 60 unemployed youth have been attending the Learning Centre as a platform for them to learn and develop their skills that they can apply in the real world.
The centre offers different programmes that cater for every individual’s needs in the IT department, programmes like networking, cyber security and IT Essentials are all available to help empower the youth. All these courses are interesting and help the students learn in a fun and exciting way.
One of the students, Nomusi Skhosana said, “Ever since I enlisted at the Learning Centre I feel more confident in my abilities because I am now more computer literate. I gained the knowledge of coding in 2015 and it helped me understand the computer language, programming and how the computer operates and that’s a skill I will have for the rest of my life.”
Once the students have completed their courses they often give back and share with the community by volunteering in the centre. By helping school children with their homework, doing research and improving on the vital skills that are on offer.
“The centre change my life and saved many lives in the community by keeping children away from the streets. School children visit the centre every day after school to learn and conquer the world. We are helping them with our skills and also giving back to the community”, added Gift Mbambo, one of the recent attendees to the IT Essentials programme who volunteers at the centre.
The Learning Centre has benefited over 6500 young people from 21 different schools since its opening in 2012. A second centre has now been established in Ratanda near Heidelberg which gives similar opportunities to the community there. Based on the great success of the Learning Centre in Orlando a third and fourth learning centre are planned to open later this year in the Free State and Kwazulu Natal.
