by Hugh C.n. Miller | Jul 24, 2019 | Uncategorized
Welcome to ORT SA!
People who work for ORT SA share many things in common. They are passionate, innovative, professional…they hold onto ORT’s values but mostly are driven with ORT SA’s mission of making people employable and creating employment opportunities
We do that through our ORT SA STEM Academy: working with schools, through STEM education, IT, coding and leadership training, with the understanding that in order to equip the generation of today with the skills for tomorrow we need to start as early as possible.
We do so through our ORT SA Skills and Enterprise Development Academy with our post schooling programmes in IT, skills development and entrepreneurship with the understanding that to become employable one needs the skills, life skills but also work experience. This is why we partnered with the YES Campaign and also offer learnerships with different SETAs
Small businesses are a vital pillar which the country’s economy relies on, and ORT Jet ( a division of ORT SA) has assisted thousands of businesses with providing the tools and support to entrepreneurs and small business to become financially sustainable.
The ORT SA Eric and Sheila Samson IT Academy was established to bridge the digital divide of knowledge, skills and awareness towards IT career options. And becoming a Cisco Networking Academy has allowed ORT SA to offer hundreds of unemployed youth with IT tools and skills.
Our new Career Hub was created to expose people and youth to career options; to what the “jobs of the future” are all about, to let them explore their strengths, passion and future paths as well as providing experience and skills transfer to make sure they are ready and equipped for the workplace.
ORT SA prides itself with its affiliation to World ORT and its legacy of almost 140 years fulfilling its vision of ‘Educating for Life’ and impacting communities through education.
We help businesses with their BBBEE and fulfilling their CSI strategy or vision.
We help government with its efforts to improve education and skills development and we help businesses to improve their profitability and financial sustainability
Join ORT SA as a member, a Youth Club member, volunteer, donor, corporate partner or a beneficiary and be part of an organisation that uses the power of education to make a change in the world.
Ariellah Rosenberg
ORT SA CEO
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Jun 19, 2019 | Uncategorized
WHAT IF OUR ANCESTORS WERE INVITED TO A TECH SHOW?
By Ariellah Rosenberg, Chief Executive Officer, ORT South Africa
If we were to organise an exhibition of current technologies and invite our ancestors and descendants from the past to attend, what would their reaction be?
Our forefathers walked in the desert for 40 years to reach their desired destination. Imagine! After all the suffering, starving and struggling in the harsh climate and tough terrain to find out that with ‘flying technologies’ they could have made the journey within an hour! Moreover, with global positioning satellite (GPS) technology, it would have been so much easier to navigate their way. And oh! How crazy they’d think we are, counting our steps, with IoT devices, and sending information to a ‘cloud’…not to ask for direction from G-d but to…monitor our health!
Imagine Florence Nightingale, known for founding the modern discipline of nursing, and a key figure in introducing new professional training standards for nursing, visiting a robot display to reveal moving machines replacing the service of human care. Japan’s aging population (30% of its population is older than 65), faces a crisis of shortage of human resource in eldercare. To resolve this predicament, robots have been placed in nursing homes. Robots that move, cry and cuddle are replacing the human work force, from lifting people from bed to entertaining them, with much success. The elderly absolutely love them!
All those involved in getting our internet to where it is today! Who would have imagined that with all the impact of the internet on our culture, commerce, communication and technology that it will also generate the biggest crime, globally? According to the latest information, cybercrime will cost the world more than six trillion dollars annually by 2021. It will be more profitable than the combined global trade of all illegal drugs!
However, if we had Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein entering some of the current classrooms, they’d most probably see no difference from their own classroom, a hundred or so years ago. They will also notice that not much has changed with teaching and assessments, using a curriculum that is mostly outdated with techniques and pedagogies that prepared children for the industrial jobs of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Companies invest in enormous amounts of research to explore the use and impact of new technologies in the global economy (McKinsey, World Economic Forum and so many other papers and reports have been published on the topic.) But what about education? Isn’t it time that we explore transforming education to keep up with the pace of change and to prepare our future generation for the world of work?
We now know more than we knew in the past on how children learn and we know that new technologies are transforming jobs as we know them. But we continue to skill our children for jobs that soon will vanish.
It is time that industries, corporations, governments and educationalists work together to transform education through updated policies, curriculum and implementation of technologies as tools to assist with the digital transformation. It is time that we start implementing the use of technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and IoT in emulating successful methodologies and incorporating them in our classrooms.
The return on our investment will be higher than any business will ever generate. And who knows, – the fruits of these investments could
be showcased one day in an exhibition featuring future technologies produced by our own future generation.
@Ariellah @ORT_SA
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Mar 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
“Last year, we promised a series of Career Guidance talks and we have actually done more than that. We have, in fact, developed the ORT SA CareerHub,” says Ariellah Rosenberg, ORT SA’s CEO, who is the visionary behind the idea.
Through a series of talks and workshops, the CareerHub will help high school students, university students, parents, teachers and even those who feel ‘stuck’ in their path, to “Explore, Expose and Experience” their way through the quagmire of choosing a career.
“The choices can be daunting ,” says Rosenberg, “You’re 18 years old, finished school and most probably, experiencing the ‘end of childhood’ as you knew it. You are faced with a life-time decision, or so you feel, about your career path. All of us have been in a similar situation… ‘the road not taken’… ‘jobs of the future’… so much pressure for relatively young souls that have being part of the schooling system for more than a decade. A system where almost everything is dictated, including your dress code, the time you wake up and the curriculum. Now, you have to decide yourself which path to take. If to learn: what to learn, where and when? “
The ORT SA CareerHub will be focused on Exploring the individual’s skills, attributes and strengths when seeking a career path, Exposing participants to the jobs of the future and giving them the Experience with practical workshops.
The CareerHub is launching on 2 April 2019 with ORT SA’s IT Ambassador, the internationally renowned writer, analyst and technology commentator, Arthur Goldstuck and ORT SA IT Ambassador, speaking about ‘jobs of the future’.
Booking essential: ora@ortsa.org.za
The next in the series will be on 16th April 2019 at 6pm: Lorraine Silverman on Career Assessments.
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Nov 22, 2018 | Uncategorized
There are very few organisations that are able to effectively combat social issues faced in many communities, including unemployment. ORT SA seamlessly manages to do this through its various programmes while producing measurable results.
The collaboration between ORT SA and the YES (Youth Employment Services) campaign has ensured that 200 young hopefuls have been placed into companies and schools as administrators for a 12-month workplace experience, that maximises their potential. The collaboration has created an essential platform for youth to develop their skills and tap into their potential.
Hilda, Botlhale and Thabiso are interns at Puo Media which is a performing art’s school specialising in dance, music and drama at the Pretoria State Theatre. “The interns are learning on the job and are very useful to the company,” said their manager.
Nondumiso and Bongi are being trained to become young, successful all-round entrepreneurs as they are receiving the necessary exposure into the world of entrepreneurship through the Gooie Café food truck based in Sandton, Johannesburg. The owner of the food truck, himself an alumni of an ORT SA Business Training course, is confident that these two individuals will be equipped to begin their own businesses in the future.
A huge thank you to all the businesses that took on these young people, for the support in enriching the lives of others. From here on, it can only be onwards and upwards!
Written by ORT SA’s YES intern, Molebogeng Assegaai
by Hugh C.n. Miller | Oct 29, 2018 | Uncategorized
While South Africa is considered an entrepreneurial powerhouse in sub-Saharan Africa, its weakest link in terms of its entrepreneurial ecosystem does happen to be start-up skills. This poses the question, what skills can local youth be taught, in order to improve their appetite for entrepreneurship? Crucial skills that can be taught for the betterment of entrepreneurs include information gathering, organizational skills, rational decision making and oral communication skills, to name a few.
ORT SA continues to upskill aspiring entrepreneurs of all levels. Just ask ORT SA’s skills training facilitator, Rugare Gapare. He says that giving these youngsters business enterprise skills provides the opportunity for them to gain the relevant and necessary skills and tools and does so through experiential learning.
Some participants are active business owners and the benefits of these courses
Learning work ethics and etiquette, marketing and customer care
are life-changing. Self-improvement is key for those wanting to become entrepreneurs. This group showed a vibrant mix of knowledge and experience. Judging from their comments, the beneficiaries were certainly advanced by the training in various ways and are going to put into practice what they learned from the sessions.
Contact us on: info@ortsa.org.za or call 011 728 7154
