This month, August 2017, RLabs Women decided to celebrate all the special women from our communities through upliftment.
As part of our goals for this month, which was to honour, recognize and help women find their purpose and identity, we designed a special programme for women that would do just that.
We kicked off the month with an interview on Bush Radio’s Ladies Night show. Suzanne Smith (head of RLabs Women) and Yvonne Mentoor (Graduate of our Moms 9.0 1st Semester 2017 course) were interviewed on their experience at RLabs.
Suzanne’s journey with RLabs began in 2010 when she was a graduate in our Moms class. Ever since, she has played an integral role in the upliftment of the women in and around South Africa.
Yvonne, experienced a similar journey. Instead of keeping everything she learnt from the Moms class, she chose to help the women and children in her local community by teaching them “cool” things about the internet and technology.
The next stop for the RLabs Women team were our seniors. Impact Direct Ministries, referred to as IDM, played an important role in beginning phase of RLabs, and they still do today. Their involvement in the Athlone area has been extremely impactful over the past 12 years. The IDM Seniors Club meets every Monday morning to share and engage with fellow seniors. The RLabs Women felt that the best way to honour our seniors would be to pamper them (mini mani’s and snacks) and also to teach them how to move with the times. They were introduced to laptops and mobile phones, where they had the opportunity to search on Google, send emails, and sign up to the RLabs virtual currency, Zlto. They thoroughly enjoyed these sessions because they were now able to show their children and grandchildren a thing or two.
Images: The IDM Seniors exploring the internet with the assistance of the RLabs Women team.
RLabsU HQ, hosts a variety of RLabs Women courses, and because we wanted to expose more women to these opportunities, we visited various centres who focus on Women Empowerment to share these opportunities with them. Since our visits, we’ve had many women express an interest in these courses and because of the interest we will be rolling out these courses in their spaces over the next few months.
The last weeks of the month we focused on catching up with students from our previous semesters to find out what they’ve been up to and what their experience with RLabs has been like, and the responses were absolutely amazing:
“I’m not selfish with my skills. I want to teach my community what I’ve learnt at RLabs.” – Yvonne Mentoor
“My aim and goal for this year is grow more and more but also to be a blessing to those that needs my help. The help can be typing, creating gmail accounts or even sponsor someone with a course at RLABS.” – Sharon Jeftha
“I chose startup women because I want to empower myself to learn more and to help my husband start his own business.” – Safiyyah Ebrahim
In preparation for our 2nd Semester of 2017 the RLabs Women team has been looking at various in which we could make our content relevant for the women who come through our doors. We are excited to meet our new ladies and to take them on the journey of self-empowerment.
