Founded in 2008, Reconstructed Living Labs (RLabs) is an incredible non-profit organisation based in Athlone and Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town. RLabs is all about empowering individuals aged 16 and above within the community by laying the groundwork for a prosperous digital and technological future. They’re the champions of levelling up your skills and setting you on the path to success.

RLabs offers a wide range of programmes open to everyone. The organisation equips people with the essential skills to boost their chances of landing that dream job. It’s like having a personal cheerleader in your corner, cheering you on to conquer the job market!

And they’ve made an incredible difference in the job market! Thanks to their excellent programmes, RLabs has managed to place a whopping 110,000 individuals into jobs. That’s 110,000 success stories! They’re job matchmakers, bringing job seekers and opportunities together in a magical dance of career fulfilment.

Recently, Fundza had the incredible opportunity to chat with Craig Du Mont, the super cool Chief Operating Officer of RLabs. We dove deep into what makes RLabs unique. It was an enlightening conversation that left us buzzing with inspiration.

Fundza: Could you provide a concise overview of Rlabs’ organisational structure and its core activities?

Craig: RLabs was a response to a particular need. It is on a mission to share hope with other people, and using education, technology, entrepreneurship and innovation to bring about hope and to reconstruct and change our communities.  

I would say that there was a request to train young people. And that time, digital skills were emerging and social media, and one of the easiest things that we could do at that time was to expose this group of young people to digital training. The situation (at the time) presented an opportunity to share hope with young people who came from a very challenging lifestyle. This was an opportunity to expose them to areas of development that could take them on a set path. And, so it’s about how could we enable these young people by giving them a new skill set, firstly to share their story with the rest of the world, and now they’re able to use this new skill to be more empowered and to experience hope that they can use this to help other people and to improve their personal life. 

Fundza: Is there a targeted age range that RLabs has, and is there a specific requirement for someone to be in the programme?

Craig: Every person is welcome to join and it’s from youth as young as 16. I remember the eldest person in the online community training programme was 90 – learning how to use social media to check on their children in other parts of the world, for example. We’ve always said to people, the only thing you have to do is smile when you come for training and the second requirement is that you must use what you’ve learned to help somebody else. It doesn’t matter how young or old they are. Yes, there might be some programmes that are specifically targeted at a certain age group, but in general, we’ve got programmes that anybody can attend. We don’t want to exclude anybody.

Fundza: What career field can people enter when they leave RLabs? 

Craig: A big focus of our youth training programme is specialised. It focuses on new emerging technologies, and new technologies that are in demand by industry, such as cloud computing, for example, programming, data analytics, and then others like UI and UX design. So, these creative digital skills that we know we can use in a broad range of fields across different industries. And those are the types of fields that we focus on because we know it’s in such big demand that young people can use them to quickly get into some kind of job opportunities. 

Fundza: Can you share a particular story of someone who got a job because of their involvement with RLabs?

Craig: A young lady started around 2018, attending our Leadership Academy, where post-school matric, you could come in, and you could actually do some leadership training. And at the same time, also have a digital skill. That young person then got an internship opportunity at RLabs. She was exposed to data analytics. And for the first time, she had the experience of working and providing a service to an international client. You know, for somebody that finished high school, coming to attend a six-month programme, suddenly having an internship and then being able to actually provide a service after a learning experience, to an international company. She completed all that and RLabs then identified her as a very good candidate to become part of a project that could end up providing over 1000 job opportunities to other youth like herself. And today, she’s now taken up a more senior role, working on a new project within RLabs, helping young people around Africa and South African with learning and development opportunities.

Fundza: Interviewing is quite a big part of being prepared for a job. Does RLabs help the participants with interview skills?

Craig: With some of our programmes, like the leadership programme, which is aimed at getting to know yourself, goal setting, overcoming obstacles, and part of the process is how you share your personal story. That then leads to you thinking about how you present yourself when you go for an interview. Internally having these short programmes and through the partnership we have, there are short modules that they can do online that they can study. But it’s a big focus, and we are even in a place where we are reconsidering the depth of their particular work readiness, particularly at a time when the unemployment rate is extremely high. And so, people are really desperate to find job opportunities and we are trying to sharpen up our skills and do more to support the community. 

Fundza: How does RLabs effectively engage youth in decision-making and foster their leadership capabilities?

Craig: The amazing thing is with RLabs there are always new projects coming up, new partnerships, and sometimes it’s just an event. For example, we do the first Thursdays, where we celebrate local art and have these markets, and for all these types of events, young people are given the opportunity to participate or to take the lead leading role. We create this space for them really to put up their hand and say, “You know what, I think I want to do that.” 

So, that’s part of our commitment to every young person. At the same time, if there are new business opportunities. For example, when we work with clients, we encourage our young people to respond and we know their abilities, we believe in them. Therefore, we create a space for them to take up some of those roles. And in essence, if you think about the make up of RLabs, it is the young people who lead, and we can definitely have confidence in them doing so.

Fundza: Why would you encourage the youth to use the opportunities RLabs provides?

Craig: I think young people need to know that there is a community of people who do care, and that they don’t have to go through the challenges all on their own. They need to know that they need a support base and that RLabs is a foundation that all young people can build on. We’ve got years of experience, we’ve got great partnerships, we’ve got community leaders, and business leaders and our partners are really invested in our community, and want to see our young people make a success. 

We prepared all these opportunities for them to come and learn. And I also want them to remember that there is nothing that they cannot learn. They can learn anything that they want to. They (the youth) should open up, expose themselves and come in, and come and visit and see what we do, sit in some of the sessions, register for courses, and be open-minded. Every young person working at RLabs today has been supported by another young person, or they’ve been recommended by somebody. They’ve been helped, so they are ready to help any other young person who wants to come to RLabs, so they should be free to do that. Those things can open doors to other possibilities. New opportunities can come from that for them.

You can visit RLabs in Athlone or their affiliate space, DLabs in Westridge, Mitchells Plain.

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