In 2022 Been Management Consulting decided to structurally donate 3.5% of their annual profit and found a suitable collaboration partner in Net4kids. We matched them to Rhiza Babuyile's Early child development project in South Africa. In addition to donating profits, the company has set up a train-the-trainer program, where consultants from Been Management Consulting have offered online masterclasses in project management, communication, goal setting and time management to Rhiza Babuyile's trainers. On their turn they share the knowledge they have acquired with the teachers in the preschool education program.
Sofie Snoek, consultant of Been Management Consulting, talks about it in their impact report: “It's very inspiring to be in touch with the teachers and the people from the NGO. Everyone is very motivated to work on the future of these townships. It's also a reality check for our consultants. For instance, we had to postpone classes twice. Once, there was a power outage because of theft of the electricity cables and another time, there were riots, making it impossible for people to join our class. Although people have very different lives from us, there's an instant connection during the classes. I guess we all love learning and connecting with people!”
The preparation in which our local partner organization and colleagues have to get to know each other, finding (always new) time slots for busy consultants and the challenges that come with working in townships, such as power failures, sometimes make it was a very time consuming process. But because of this intensive way of working together, there is now a professional training program that can be used again in the coming years and we see that 28 teachers have been trained indirectly through the 5 masterclasses, which has had an impact on 20 ECDs and 564 children. In these KPIs you can read more about the impact it has had on the facilitators, teachers and the children in the schools of Rhiza.
Development is central
Why did they choose this project in particular? Esther Eijkemans (colleague of Sofie, also a consultant at Been MC): “We choose Rhiza Babuyile because it focuses on development. Something that we also find very important. Moreover, it suits our company to contribute to a system change: the teachers learn themselves, they contribute to the development of young children and ultimately everyone in the township benefits from a fully-fledged school. So a win-win-win, then.”
Sofie adds: “We were looking for a good cause where we can make an impact in several ways. Not only by donating money, but also by thinking and working together. There is room for that at Net4kids. In addition, Net4kids fits nicely into our ecosystem of collaborations. We hope to encourage other parties in our network to do something similar.”
