The Raymond Ackerman Academy focuses on building business skills as well as developing soft skills and confidence in young aspiring entrepreneurs. Our life orientation curriculum is therefore an important component of the programme and it has been critical for us to get the right partners on board to facilitate the life orientation workshops.
CONTRACT has provided excellent workshops, which have made a significant difference to our students. The material is thought-provoking, the presentations are professional and the facilitators handle the workshops in a manner that shows care and encourages participation. We look forward to a continued relationship with CONTRACT.

Elli Yiannakaris, Director Raymond Ackerman Academy

In Germany and Europe, we work in the profit and non-profit sector, and provide value for our clients – whether the client is Greenpeace or Daimler Chrysler, Vodafone or the World Council of Churches. This diversity enriches and shapes our work, and we enjoy taking cultural impulses not only from one country to another, but also from one sector to the other.
In South Africa, we continue engaging with a diverse client portfolio. One of our non-profit clients is the renowned Raymond Ackerman Academy – we are thoroughly enjoying our work with our lively and fascinating target groups there, and it seems that our participants are enjoying working with us just as much.

Luana Vaveki, a previous student of the Academy, has now become our assistant and newest CONTRACT team member. Read her description of the academy, as well as her experience of it here.

The Raymond Ackerman Academy for Entrepreneurial Development is an intense six month full-time programme offered to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds between the ages of 18 and 30. Approximately 30 people participate in the programme twice a year. The academy’s aim is to empower people who do not have the financial means or education to start their own business or to advance themselves professionally. This is done by providing entrepreneurial training and self-development that will enable them to better themselves and enter promising careers – be it in their own new business or in a company they will work for.

The Academy got its name from its founder Raymond Ackerman, who is one of South Africa’s most famous entrepreneurs (he is the founder and owner of the Pick n Pay supermarket chain). The Academy is sponsored by Mr Ackerman, as well as the City of Cape Town.
The academy opened its doors in February 2005 at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. The course focuses on business skills, such as marketing, operations, accounting, human resources, business numeracy, business planning and business writing; as well as life skills, such as self-leadership, communication, time management and career development. Students also attend workshops regarding innovation and creativity. Throughout the 6 months, students work in groups, developing their own business idea and creating a business plan.

MY EXPERIENCE at the Academy

It is difficult to put my experience of my time at Raymond Ackerman Academy into words. No words can ever cover what it was really like to go through the programme.

The Academy was fantastic, but it definitely was not what I expected. I thought it would be fun and easy to be at the Academy; that I would sail through the six months, and then leave. But this was not the case. In reality, it was a serious, intense and extremely challenging period in my life. It started with the selection process, which was very tough, we had to write convincing essays, give reference letters and come up with the creative business idea and then present it to the panel of judges. It was the first time I ever had to do anything like this.

While I was at Raymond Ackerman Academy (RAA), I realised that RAA is different from ordinary education. It focuses more on practical education, creative thinking and innovation. This has helped me to think out of the box and come up with fresh ideas of doing things. We also had wonderful and inspiring lectures, given by people who have their own successful businesses. Listening to them telling their stories inspired me, and it left me feeling that anything is possible if you believe it is.

My most precious moment at the Academy was meeting Mr Raymond Ackerman and presenting my business plan in front of him. To be in the same room with him is very humbling and is one of the things I will cherish about the time at the Academy. For all of us, the presentation for Mr Ackerman was something we were working hard towards and were very nervous about. Yet having completed the presentations, we felt it was one of the most inspiring experiences of our lives, and it was worth every effort! We left feeling that if we could present to Mr Ackerman, we could present to anyone!

CONTRACT at the Raymond Ackerman Academy

I enjoyed every part of my studies at the Academy, but the part I enjoyed the most was the life orientation workshops offered by CONTRACT. The CONTRACT workshops covered self-leadership, time management, career development, communication skills and presentation skills. CONTRACT’s lessons taught me skills I will use not only in my professional life, but in all other areas of my life, too. The learning activities we were given during the workshops had us engage intensively, and provided huge learning. CONTRACT’s style of engaging the learners and really having them participate was very refreshing, and kept us all on our toes.
The sessions made me aware of my strengths and weaknesses. I have noticed in my everyday life that my communication and time management have improved. My relationship with my family has improved along with my friends. The CONTRACT sessions left me equipped and feeling that I am a far better person that I have ever been – and that is a great feeling. I know it was similar for others in our class.

While I loved the CONTRACT workshops as a part of our Raymond Ackerman Academy education, I also realised that I want to be working with these kinds of topics in my career. Having learned about being proactive, I approached Judith from CONTRACT and asked if I could work for them. And here I am sitting now, in the CONTRACT office, writing this article… and being happy: happy to have attended the Academy, happy to have been part of CONTRACT workshops, and happy about the final result of it all: me being a part of the CONTRACT team.

Would you like to expand your leadership repertoire with the skill of facilitation? Are you regularly required to facilitate meetings and workshops? Would you like to be able to recognise group processes better? Would you like to know and practice how to facilitate in a sensitive, competent and target-oriented way? 

In our facilitation workshop, you will gain a deeper understanding of facilitation, get to know a variety of facilitation tools, and apply facilitative methods to achieve intended results. You will develop your own facilitation competence as well as your individual ‘facilitation style’.

A group can be more than the sum of its individuals – however it can also be much less! In order to achieve the ‘more than the sum’, we offer ideas, methods, exercises to discover your own facilitation style.
Facilitation is more than ‘delivering a workshop’, it is more than leading a group of people through a meeting, and certainly more than a new form of training. Facilitators lead and guide processes that get groups to a specific result. This means setting up process effectively, holding processes professionally, leading through difficult situations, balancing different personalities within a group, all while keeping the intended outcome in mind.

Workshop content

Our two-day workshop covers the following topics:

- Contracting: setting up facilitated processes to be effective
- Understanding different types of facilitation and their application
- What it takes to facilitate: holding a group and process professionally
- Facilitating to get to a result: different levels of facilitator involvement
- The facilitation process: planning and implementing facilitation
- Facilitation techniques: creative methods to achieve results
- Dealing with challenges in facilitation

The workshop consists of a mix of theoretical input, facilitation exercises with feedback and self-reflection.

To ensure the highest opportunity for learning and practical application, the number of participants is limited to 10.

Course Details

Date: 22nd and 23rd April 2010, 9 am until 5 pm

Location: Little Stream Conference Venue, Constantia
 
Cost: R 1.995 incl. VAT (includes tea/ coffee/ muffins, excludes lunch)

Facilitators

Judith Haupt is a facilitator and consultant of CONTRACT South Africa. She worked as a trainer, facilitator and consultant in Germany before returning to South Africa in 2007. Judith has been developing and facilitating management and leadership seminars in Europe and South Africa – her clients in South Africa include Mercedes Benz, the UCT Graduate School of Business, Raymond Ackerman Academy, Shuttleworth Foundation and Old Mutual. She has also facilitated numerous team development and organisational development processes in the profit- and non-profit sector.

Mignon Lotz, the founder of PEERPOWER, is an experienced strategic facilitator with 10 years planning and process experience, eight years of business related facilitation experience and four years of coaching training. She spent five years in IT related project facilitation, specialising in defining large projects and working with project teams to align and focus them. She grew into facilitating strategy processes in the corporate environment and has worked with The Cape Argus Cycle Tour, Vodacom, Metropolitan and Old Mutual. For the last 7 years Mignon has worked with Entrepreneurs and has been running her own company for 6 years.

To find out more about the workshop, or secure your place, call Judith on 021 4097043 or send us an email!

In September 2009 I had the opportunity to work with a team at a Non-Profit Organisation in Cape Town. The organisation offers programmes in townships to equip people for modern life in South Africa. Programmes offered by the organisation range from Sports and Recreation , Arts and Music, Health and Safety, Reading and Greening Programmes.

In the past years the diverse activities of the organisation were largely financed by regular donations. However due to the overall economic situation, the organisation now has to actively raise more funds. These funds are available, but require effective management of processes within the organisation, and proof of the utilisation of the funds.

This means that the employees of the organisation – who directly work with the children and teens in townships – have to document their activities and proof of successes. This is a new concept for most of them, and is not a particularly attractive task, as their core competency and ‘heart’ of their work lies in the direct work with the children. This leads to tensions with the team leaders and the General Manager, as they have to document and justify the activities for the donors. Management of the organisation realised that the time of pleas is over and decided to enter a team development process.

Layo Seriki from CIELARKO, a cooperation partner of CONTRACT South Africa, and I were invited to work with the team (staff coordinators) for one day, and to initiate the Kick-Off for new processes.

In our briefing with the team leader and HR manager we found out that the team is heterogeneous – it consists of people who have been with the organisation for very long or only a very short time, of Blacks and Colours, of men and women. We also found out that there were tensions between the team members.

Our goal was to create a feeling of curiosity and of ‘YES LET’S GO’ for the new ways of doing things within the team. We had two hypotheses: that the team members had possibly not yet fully realised the meaning of the financial change for the organisation, and that the different groups within the organisation did not feel adequately recognised and seen for their contribution to the organisation. This was the basis for the development of our agenda.

Looking back, we realise that it was good to let the team members be active, thus to

• have an introduction round in which they ‘speculated’ about each others’ personal resources and challenges at the organisation;
• to have them recognise the force fields of the organisation; and to
• define and formulate their personal contribution to change.

The workshop was a particularly intensive examination of my own fears. I could physically feel the team’s enthusiasm for their work as well as the existing tensions within the groups, connected with the urgency from management to introduce the change within the organisation.

This made me realise once again that truly far-reaching change can only be realised with respect for the experiences as well as the frame of reference of all people involved. For us as consultants this means to move between the poles of the powerful and the members of an organisation. In particular, this means

• to create transparency regarding the background and interests, as well as to pay attention to ‘what is important right now’, and
• to constantly have an eye on creating respect and acknowledgement between all parties involved, in all communication and points of contact.

I left Cape Town feeling that what we saw and did in the organisation represented what is needed in many organisations in South Africa – concepts of integration, and an attitude of acknowledgement, acknowledgement, acknowledgement. Realising that old behaviours might have seemed ‘the best solution’ at the time, but that we now need to consciously re-learn our behaviour patterns. Specifically, this can mean to ask for ‘favourite behaviours’, and to then ask for the required change. And regarding the change: to focus on how the change can be handled best, but to also realise that there is no real change without instability and irritation.

And what can consultants and facilitators learn from this? To make sure to really be in contact, in touch with people, and to gain knowledge about what was. Have people tell stories, have them paint, question, dance, sing!

Thanks to the organisation and to South Africa for this wonderful experience!

Anette Dielmann