The COVID-19 pandemic hit hard on our nation’s economy as many lost their jobs including some of our parents. As a result of this, our Social Services team members ran a ‘Create your CV’ workshop for Christel House South Africa parents. Over the past two months, our Junior School parents attended the workshop every Thursday and were awarded with points that went towards our Sibenza Sonke parent volunteering program.
Sibenza Sonke is a ‘point-based’ parent volunteering system that requires our parents to achieve 100 volunteer points per year (or 200 points if they have more than 1 child or a Grade R child). The ‘Create your CV’ initiative was a workshop, where parents could take part in and receive volunteer points (between 10-20 points). The initiative started in May and ran until the end of June 2021. It took place at our Junior School computer lab, as parents were encouraged to create and compile their own CVs with our Social Services teams members were on standby to assist.
“Our team saw the need and thought to give our parents the resources to compile and receive copies of their CV’s to assist in the search for employment,” says Jessica Kannemeyer, our Junior School Social Worker.
One of our parents that attended the workshops, Jasmina W., commented, “As a person that have not entered the workplace for over 20 years, the workshop was very informative as I learnt so much like how to conduct oneself in an interview and creating your own CV. This workshop has given me the necessary push to enter the workplace, and all it cost was for me to attend it”.
Our Social Services team have prepared a ‘Parent Winter School’ in July, which will focus on massive open online courses (MOOC) and other online teachings, to empower, educate and enrich parents as well as earn volunteer points.