The KwaZulu-Natal Chamber of Printing SA, in partnership with the Lungisisa Indlela Village (LIV), recently hosted its second skills development project, which saw 10 unemployed community members from Cottonlands undertaking a two week screen printing training programme.
The partnership with LIV was carefully chosen as it is a non-profit organisation with a strong community focus. Their role is to place abandoned children into a safe family environment with a trained foster mother to love them, a school to educate them and a community where they get to live a relatively normal life, which then enables them to learn the necessary essential moral values and life skills to become a generation that will bring positive change to South Africa and the world. The 10 learners were recruited to participate by Anne Meyer, who is responsible for training and skills development at LIV Village.
The course, which is funded by the FP&M SETA, and includes one week of screen printing training and one week of entrepreneurial skills training, after which each learner is then awarded a fully paid screen printing kit. The hope is that these learners use their skills to create an income for themselves and in turn, contribute to the eradication of unemployment in South Africa.
The programme includes three elements: the theory of screen printing, practical application, and basic business skills that would assist in growing a small business.
‘We at Printing SA believe that this screen printing training project will empower these local community residents by providing them with the skills to enable them to provide a screen printing service to LIV and perhaps other organisations and businesses. LIV has a clothing manufacturing department where clothing and other fabrics are produced. The hope is that all the screen printing needed could be contracted out to these skilled community members, thereby setting up a number of micro enterprises,’ said Geoff Warren, director of Printing SA in KwaZulu-Natal.
Printing SA is the official trade federation representing printing, packaging and associated businesses in the industry. They provide training, industry representation, technical expertise and consultancy services for the sustainability of the industry.
On 23 June, the learners completed their first week of training where they produced their own screen printed T-shirts. They will now participate in the next phase of their training. The entire course will culminate in a prize giving ceremony to be held at LIV Village on 7 September.
PRINTING SA +27112871160 info@printingsa.org www.printingsa.org
