Shackbuilder helps restore dignity, teach skills
INTENT on restoring dignity to dwellers of informal structures and equipping unemployed youth, not-for-profit company (NPC), The Shackbuilder, recently celebrated building its 100th home in Groot Brak River in the Southern Cape.
Quinton Adams, an educational psychologist and founder of the organisation, said he has identified how to upskill unemployed youth from Cape Town communities who can make an impact by providing a home to people in informal settlements and the restoration of human dignity.
Expanding the project of building a new shack or informal structure for a desperate family, Adams has now also launched a three-week programme, the Backyard Varsity, in which young people are equipped with basic building skills.
“The Shackbuilder had embarked on training unemployed youth with basic building skills. These skills will help the enthusiastic groups who join the programme, making them employable.
“At the moment the Backyard Varsity programme runs over three weeks in which we expose them to different types of timber, making their own furniture and eventually work in a group to build an informal structure. They’re taught on site and are equipped with skills in project management and how to work in a team. All fundamental in becoming employable,” said Adams.
He had started the NPC after witnessing the devastation of a cold winter in Cape Town in informal settlements where people live in squalor and inhabit dilapidated shacks. He initially started building new shacks with unemployed people from affected communities.
“But I realised these people, especially our youth, don’t have the basic skills to build the new shacks, and with this new programme, in which we’ve trained about 25 people so far, they are taught how to work with a jigsaw, a level and low-power tools such as generators and electric drills,” said Adams.
The NPC is donation-funded and runs the Backyard Varsity bimonthly with a small intake group for three weeks, during which they build basic furniture items with pallets – a chair, table and bed – which residents need in a home after suffering shack fires, said Adams.
“It’s very exciting to see what this programme does for the confidence of our youth, especially since there’s a cloud of doom and gloom in the country owing to many factors. But on a small scale, we can make a significant change. We’re turning massive youth unemployment into mass employment opportunities,” said Adams.
Make a donation to the organisaiton – Bank: Nedbank Account number: 1178396819 Branch: 198765
For more information, visit: https:// www.theshackbuilder.com/