SA digital academy EduPower opens Cape campus

Durban-based EduPower Skills Academy has opened a state-of-the-art campus in Athlone, Cape Town.

The launch has been welcomed by the company’s Western Cape (WC) clients as the campus has been established to meet the demand for high-quality skills development in the area.

A proven learnership model will create opportunities for the WC’s unemployed youth

Founded in 2016, EduPower has helped change the lives of hundreds of unemployed youth at its campuses in Durban and Joburg. Both the able-bodied and people with disabilities have accessed the job market through the academy – opportunities they would never otherwise see.

Rajan Naidoo, Managing Director of EduPower, commented: “Through our academies in Durban and Johannesburg, we have refined a training model that not only benefits our clients by facilitating high-quality learnerships, we also deliver life-changing skills development for SA’s unemployed youth, from which they can build sustainable careers,” 

The Cape EduPower Academy

The Athlone campus is located in an area fast becoming a business process outsourcing (BPO) and tech hub and features an innovative training centre that caters for up to 2000 learners. 

“We chose the Athlone location as it is a central hub in the Western Cape and easily accessible for our learners. It is also large enough so that both the training and work experience required for our learnerships sit under one roof,” Rajan explained. “Cape Town is fast becoming the call centre nucleus on the continent and the sector currently employs more than 60 000 people. In fact, over the past five years, the regional BPO industry has created 35 000 additional job opportunities to service the international community,” he said.

EduPower’s Cape campus offers classroom training supported by hands-on learning in the Academy’s custom-built contact centre.

“One of the key growth sectors in SA is BPO, so we focus our work experience on upskilling our learners to meet the needs of this industry. While we offer several different learnerships, our model is based on delivering structured, experiential on-the-job learning opportunities through which our youth can develop the career skills most in demand by today’s employers,” clarified Rajan.

Learners develop practical and relevant skills while completely immersed at the contact centre. A learnership requires 10 hours of evidence-based work experience for every course credit completed. EduPower’s learners gain this experience by working a regular workweek and dialling unsimulated live campaigns.

“From surveys to lead generation campaigns, to sales and so much more, our learners get real experience that develops both their abilities and their confidence. The result is a proven model that provides invaluable experience for young people who struggle to access the labour market and bridges them successfully into call centre agents,” says Rajan. “Our learnerships will therefore not only meet our client’s skills development requirements with such a large BPO market, but our learners will also have the skills required to ensure that upon completion of their qualification, they will be able to secure jobs and build sustainable careers. And at the end of the day, that’s why we do what we do,” he concluded.

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Featured image: (From left) Sean Sharp, Head of Sales for EduPower Skills Academy and AJ Venter, Transformation Architect at EduPower (Supplied)