Rise International

We partnered with a very overcrowded orphanage called glc (god's love centre), that was in desperate need of additional residential facilities for the 45 orphaned and vulnerable children resident in their 2-bedroomed facility. We purchased an additional piece of land for glc, about 1km from the current site, as it was not possible to extend on the existing site. We recruited the first cohort of fellows from lesotho, who were recent unemployed graduates from the built environment as well as a couple of social worker graduates, given the nature of the project, to join our design & build training program called in loco. The 20 fellows were recruited based on their entrepreneurial spirit and interest in running their own enterprises. The fellowship started in january 2018 and was supposed to run for 6 months, however it had to be extended until december due to delays in finalising the designs and the acquisition of the building permit for the new buildings. The fellowship was a full time design & build "learning by doing" training program which included business skills and soft skills development such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication, leadership, teamwork, negotiation and many other skills. The fellows got to do everything from design through to construction such as building permit application, project management, logistics & operations, procurement, site management, health & safety, site architecture and so on. The fellows also got to learn about business planning including how to carry out market research, write a business plan, financial planning and so on.