New direction for Vukani

When a company reach a significant milestone like a 10-year birthday celebration, it is time to reflect on where we have been, what we have achieved, what we do really well, and what we should stop doing, and focus on in the future. The Vukani team has just been through this process of evaluation, and has decided on the way forward to continue contributing to the jewellery industry of South Africa in the most meaningful manner.

In the past decade Vukani has spent most of its time, money raised and other resources setting up jewellery training projects and managing them to a point of stability, and then handing them over to community boards to manage. Vukani has also generated income by being a training provider (and is accredited by MQA, Umalusi and registered at the Department of Education), lobbying and firming relationships in the jewellery industry, delivering research and development and consulting services.

In July 2009, Vukani reached significant milestones, delivering two fully working and operational projects: the Limpopo Jewellery Cluster hosting the SEDA Limpopo Jewellery Incubator (R13-million) and the Ekurhuleni Jewellery Project (R7-million) to respective funders involved. Since then, management has spent time doing research and in discussion with industry role-players, including the MQA and Jewellery Council.  Management have made a decision to position Vukani in the training coordination and service provider sphere for the next 3 – 5 years, based on the need in the industry for simplified and effective training opportunities. The skills shortage in the industry, aligned with the national skills priorities and goals, also drives this strategy.

Vukani will continue to assist the two recent projects with (as per current SLA and contracts with funders) the services listed below, as the projects become more self-reliant in terms of operational implementation. Vukani will:

·         oversee financial and other management,

·         report to funders

·         support with stakeholder relationship, and

·         support with marketing and fundraising

The core focus of Vukani as an organization would be to provide training support and coordination to the Jewellery Industry.

These services will include:

1)     Registering jewelers with SARS to allocate their Skills Development Levy to the MQA in order to claim these levies back.

2)     Register and manage all learnership applications, skills programme applications, etc. that jewelers make to the MQA.

3)     Assisting jewelers with Workplace Skills Plans, all administration and the Annual Training Report, in order to claim back mandatory grants.

4)     Handle sourcing and delivering of training, all coordination (venue, time, date and content) according to the Workplace Skills Plan, and the need of the individual jewelers. All training administration and coordination will be done for you as a jeweller, and will meet all the accreditation and statutory requirements.

5)     Presenting an annual calendar filled with short skills training programmes nationally in major city centres.

6)     All other training related administration and services.

With 10 years of experience in providing the industry with high-quality trained jewelers, Vukani is well positioned to extend our scope to the rest of the industry, providing up-skilling and training opportunities to the jewellery industry nationally. It is with great anticipation that we launch the new services, and you can obtain more information from Penny Moemi at penny@vukani.org, or 012 326 8534.