KBOS a beacon of excellence in the KoueBokkeveld
By Louise Brodie
From small beginnings and through hard work, theKoueBokkeveld Training Centre, better known as KBOS, has established itself as an invaluable resource for skills and personal training and development in the larger Ceres area. So much so that they recently received a Service Excellence Award from the Western Cape Department of Agriculture.
Situated in the small, remote town of Op-die-Berg in the KoueBokkeveld, the ongoing successes of this remarkable facility have improved the lives of countless people in the area and it has established a sphere of influence well beyond its location.
KBOS was established in 2000 by Joy van Biljon to continue providing farmers in the area with their training and development needs after the Rural Foundation was disbanded. The primary responsibility of the centre is to assist the 80-odd member farms in the KoueBokkeveld, Ceres and Wolseley areas with their training and development, with particular emphasis on these member farms. The centre has a closed membership and although it does provide training in some other areas, the first order of business is providing services to the member farms. The centre works closely with its member farms and has trained a community development facilitator on each farm that continuously assists with the communication and facilitation of all the training and development initiatives. For many of these people, this role on the farm is a calling.
The centre is run as a closed corporation and senior staff members are shareholders in the business and the level of commitment from the team of trainers and administrative staff is remarkable. “It is an expressed goal of the centre to employ local people and most of the permanent staff grew up as farm children on local farms,” explains Joy. “As the trainers are local, they can relate directly to the farm workers and their circumstances, which really help them to relate to the people who attend our training and development courses”.
“The people that work here form an incredibly hard-working and committed team. An example of this is that we are currently undertaking 35 learnerships beyond our capacity, and this means that in addition to the usual working hours, our trainers also work two nights per week and on Saturdays. The work ethic, precision, motivation and diligence of the staff are excellent and through this we are proving that talent is available and that a business in a rural environment can be successful. Success breeds success, and while there is still a great deal of room for improvement, we are continuously working towards this.”
KBOS offers a range of training and development initiatives which include training courses, learnerships, internships, a foundation learning programme with apprenticeships, as well as youth and community programmes. Of the courses offered by the centre, 78% are skills training courses and 22% are personal development courses. During 2016, the centre provided training to 11333 people. While the business side of the agricultural industry generally prefers to focus on skills training, according to Joy, there is a distinct relationship between the two types of courses; the more life skills the students have acquired thorough experience or as a result of development training, the more successful the results of the skills training courses are likely to be.
The skills training courses cover topics such as fruit picking, Health and Safety, supervisors, tractor driver and spray operator, driver training, administration, crèche training, workshop content and many more. The center’s largest skills training course is the fruit picking course and along with the pruning course, this represents 31% of the total number of courses which the centre offers.
Jacob Coetzee
Jacob Coetzee grew up on Kromfontein in the KoueBokkeveld, where his family has worked for generations. After attending Kromme Rhee Agricultural College, working as a production manager and a lecturer at Kromme Rhee, he joined KBOS in 2003. “When I joined KBOS there were only three of us here. Looking back today, I could not have made a better decision,” says Jacob.
Jacob’s main focus is to offer Agricultural Learnerships to farm workers from the area.
“The course material provides workers with relevant information for their jobs. For instance, the farm production cycle information is presented at the same time as the various growth stages are happening on the farms, so in effect, the theory and practical parts of the learning run simultaneously. We have received very positive feedback from students that have completed these Learnerships”.
Ayanda Jack
The centre has also been offering the Learnership training in Xhosa since 2006 and Ayanda Jack and LuyoloTshokotsha are the Xhosa Learnership trainers. “We receive good feedback about the Learnerships,” says Ayanda. “And the general impact on our community is very positive and people are growing as a result.”
Ayanda has been with KBOS since 2004. He grew up in the Lady Grey region of the Eastern Cape and came to the Western Cape because his father worked here. He completed his tertiary education at Ichala College in Queenstown. “My father told me that he had seen an advertisement for a translator at KBOS. I applied for the job and was accepted. While I worked as a translator, I also completed the NQF level 1 Learnership as I did not have an agricultural background. As time went on, I found that working here and being involved in training was my calling and I have grown a great deal as a person through this process”.
The centre also presents Ubuntu camps to welcome the seasonal workers, most of whom are young Xhosa-speaking people who have just arrived in the area from the Eastern Cape. The camps are orientation camps and the presentations are about life skills, focussing on life choices and responsibilities. The camps are organised over a weekend and the centre offers 9 of these annually. “The largest-growing group of seasonal workers is men under the age of 35,” explains Ayanda. “They arrive here in a part of the country that is strange to them and often need counselling and we can assist them. I have been involved with running these camps for 10 years and am very proud of what we are doing. One of the results of our initiatives is that we are finding that more and more Xhosa people are approaching us on their own initiative to attend courses at KBOS”.
“We have recently started a new programme (the Wamkelekile programme) to welcome the seasonal workers to our area. This is usually a day event with soccer matches and to launch the day, we invite representatives from the local police services and health care services to deliver an orientation address outlining the security and health challenges we face in the area.”
Jacob and Ayanda explained that many of the students that do the learnership training first arrive at the centre as seasonal workers completing life skills and training courses such as the fruit picking courses offered from December to February. They are offered in Xhosa and Afrikaans and are hugely beneficial for the workers, most of whom do not have any experience in fruit picking. It is often during this process that the presenters have the opportunity to identify workers that are potential Learnership students.
Carmen Roberts
Carmen Roberts grew up on Kromfontein Farm and, after completing her National Certificate in Human Resource Management at Boland College in Paarl, saw an advertisement for a post at KBOS and applied. “This was in 2001 and when I joined KBOS, the staff complement was just Joy and I. We have certainly come a long way since then,” says Carmen. “I was involved in computer training previously, but now I am responsible for administration co-ordination for the centre, which includes the admin for the short courses we offer and the AgriSETA administration. There are three of us that work in the admin department and we also receive assistance from the Public Relations department.”
“We offer the Foundation Learning Programme aimed at preparing students with the potential to be placed in apprenticeship programmes for entry into the job market. We have applied to AgriSETA to be able to offer apprenticeships, as some of the candidates have practical skills but not theoretical knowledge and others have studied but have no practical experience. The apprenticeships have the potential to provide a solution for both these needs. We currently have a group of 20 students who are completing the Foundation Learning Course with students that have to potential for apprenticeships as fitters and maintenance mechanics”.
“Working at KBOS for the past 16 years has been an incredible journey in personal growth. It has also helped that I am from the area and can relate to the people we train. Though our training we have made a remarkable difference to the lives of many people, both in their workplace skills levels and in their personal development.” Carmen is currently completing a B Comm degree through Unisa and has been chosen by the KBOS shareholders to take over the management of the centre when Joy van Biljon retires in 2020.
Edna Nigrini
Edna Nigrini is originally from Villiersdorp and obtained her Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Stellenbosch. When her husband got a job in Ceres, she applied for a job at KBOS and has been with the centre since 2014. Edna is responsible for the social, community and youth projects. “We have an annual community development programme which includes recreational activities and incorporates elements of all these focus areas and a large part of this is youth development,” explains Edna. “Our youth development programme involves the children who live on the farms and the project grows with them throughout their preschool and school years, with the aim of helping them with their life and career choices. Our involvement with the schools starts with a music programme, wherein primary school children are trained to play the recorder and high school pupils are trained to play the guitar. We receive funding for this project from the Department of Sports and Culture and the National Lottery, and the pupils have the opportunity to show off their skills in our ‘PlaaskomDorp Toe’ concerts.”
“The youth programme offers presentations at local schools, as well as a wide range of camps for school children of various ages which focus on what is relevant for the youngsters at their particular age. The programme includes a teenage mentorship programme. We identify and train these youths as mentors and use them as role models to assist us at the various camps and this has proved highly successful.”
The centre also offers the PACE programme, which assists pupils with online aptitude tests to assist them with career choices. “We first perform the tests with pupils in Grade 9 to help guide them with subject choices. When they are closer to leaving school, the tests are taken again. Once the results are received, we follow up with a discussion on their realistic expectations and prospects and assist them with searching and applying for possible bursaries. Seeing that we make a difference to the lives of individuals provides us with the inspiration to continue with our initiatives.”
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Reflections from Joy on how the farming community has changed over the past 30 years since she has been providing training in the area.
Over the years the levels of both skills training and development have progressed to the point that a high benchmark has been established amongst the management and general workforce in the area. Years ago, growers were hesitant to train their staff too well as they were concerned that they would be head hunted by neighbouring farms, but this is no longer the case as the standard of training in the area has been set. Farmers around here now budget for training like they budget for all other farming expenses as this is seen as equally important.
One of the fundamental changes over the years has been a change in the demographic representation of management teams. Two decades ago, the management teams were all white, while today this is a good multiracial mix. Unfortunately, there are very few women represented in management teams. Also, farm management is under far more stress now than ten years ago, as they have to deal with more labour and Good Agricultural Practices administration than before.
Over the past 20 to 30 years the level of responsibility successfully assumed by permanent farm workers has increased considerably. This has coincided with a marked change in the profile of pickers in our area. Pickers were traditionally localcoloured people, but today they are predominantly young Xhosa people, (mainly seasonal workers from the Eastern Cape).
Wages have increased, but at the same time many of the traditional In Natura “freebies” have disappeared and farm workers feel a loss at losing these.
KBOS staff -in the back row (left to right) are:Ayanda Jack, who works with the agri department and translations, Edna Nigrini, our social worker and head of the community development section, Danelle Titus, who helps in admin and with the music project, Jacob Coetzee, head of the agri department, LandiKahlmeyer from the community development section, Luyolo (Tshoks) Tshokotsha from the agri department, and Joy van Biljon, CEO. In the front row, from left to right, are Samantha Gibb, who handles marketing and PR, Yolanda Erasmus who is largely involved in admin, Winnie van Zyl, our finance head, and Carmen Roberts, head of admin.