May 9, 2003
By Lucille Davie
WITH responses like "a lot of fun", "a nice day", "a good idea" and "it should have been two days", Cell C's "Take a Girl Child to Work" day on Thursday appears to have been a resounding success.
The idea behind the initiative, which originated in America in 1993 as a "Take Our Daughters to Work Day", was that companies would host high school girls for a day, giving them insight into different work situations to assist them in making career choices, but also to break the stereotypical girl's choices of nursing, teaching or social work.
The Cell C initiative, approved by the Department of Education, had a number of custodians, including First Lady Zanele Mbeki, Tracy Going of SABC Morning Live, Wendy Lucas-Bull, CEO of FNB, and Sibongile Khumalo, diva extraordinaire.
The project went all the way to the top. A relaxed President Thabo Mbeki hosted a group of six girls, who spent an informative day with him at Parliament, checking the pile of papers awaiting his attention on his desk and asking lots of questions.
Former president Nelson Mandela got into the spirit of things too: a group of girls spent time with him at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton. He recounted in a serious tone how he failed the first and second years of his LLB law degree several times before finally passing his exams, with the message that it takes perseverance to reach your dreams.
The Star newspaper took on 16 Grade 11 girls from Jeppe High School for several days and they produced the Thursday edition of the Tonight entertainment supplement. Their smiling faces throughout the 16 pages testify to their enjoyment of the project.
Twenty Grade 11 girls from Parktown Girls' High School in Parkview spent the day at media company United Stations in Parktown where they recorded a Cell C radio advert, with the day being described as "fun".
The group I joined were a bunch of 19 girls from CIDA City Campus, an almost-free university in the heart of Johannesburg's CBD that enrols disadvantaged students from around the country, most of them sponsored by corporates.
The girls were picked up from the Campus at 9am on Thursday morning by a driver from The Courier & Freight Group in Isando, a distribution company and wholly owned subsidiary of the South African Post Office which includes the XPS and PX courier brands.
CFG sets a good example: the MD, the Marketing Director and the Sales and Marketing Director are all women. In fact the company employs more women than men: 60%.
The CIDA girls, ranging in age from 19 to 22, bubbled with shy confidence and plenty of smiles. They were chosen because they are enrolled in the ICT Academy at CIDA. On arrival they were taken to change into T-shirts bearing the company's logo on the front, and on the back: "Take a girl child to work day 2003" and then the fun started.
They were broken into groups and taken into different departments of the company: finance, marketing, HR and the large call centre.
In the finance department a clerk sat giving a patient explanation to a group of girls on the process of invoicing a client. In the call centre a group of girls were staring intently at the supervisor, taking in every word of his explanation of how the centre operates. Questions were posed, answers were willingly given. Meanwhile, the operators quietly took calls, almost oblivious to the strangers in the room.
The call centre supervisor, Aaron Gontse, who started in the company as a driver, exuded quiet enthusiasm. He said of the initiative: "This is a good idea, it enhances their chances of jobs. We need to make the time to spend with the girls."
A group of four girls were standing around the desk of a staff member, Elsie Boucher, of the HR department. She explained how the call centre staff had to treat all calls from clients with politeness and helpfulness. In much the same way the HR department had to treat the sales and marketing staff, their colleagues, like clients. Boucher was herself a good saleswoman: "There will always be room for HR people," she concluded.
Several girls suggested to Boucher that they be taken on on a casual basis, without pay, to learn the ins and outs of the department. Boucher was keen on the idea and is now taking it up further.
A group of excited girls congregated in the foyer, saying how they'd been let in on an internal investigation that was currently under way in the company. With comments like "I want to find out more" and "This is interesting", they put their heads together and giggled.
By this time it was 12.30pm and lunch time. The girls, chatting happily, crowded down the corridor to the canteen where freshly-made rolls and cokes were waiting for them in the garden eating area.
After lunch it was another detailed session in the call centre.
The next day Ntombi Mthiyane, 20, from Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal, summed up her day: "It was a nice day and a good idea. The day was short - it should have been two days." Mthiyane says she learnt about the company's processing of invoices and how the call centre works. Her ambition is to work in IT; finance is her second choice.
CFG's Marketing Co-ordinator Prem Govender, described the day as an "absolute success", with the staff being happy and pleased to have been involved in the project.
