Igugulethu Disabled & Art Care Centre is a non-profit organisation (NPO) which was established by Ms Thembelihle Kunene and Mrs Salakuthini Simelane in 2013, together with other five members who are involved in the day to day running of the organisation. The organisation is based in Durban at Ndwedwe area, KwaZulu-Natal Province and is 100% black owned, majority being women in the management. The NPO focuses on employment and support of vulnerable disabled groups, youth and elderly disabled individuals.

The aim of the organisation is to integrate vulnerable and disabled individuals into the society by building and transforming:

• - a sustainable business model that aims to assist all vulnerable and disabled individuals in growth and employment prospects in the area and province.
• - awareness of the vulnerable and disabled individuals in the workplace

The organisation is a successful organisation that assist in providing learnerships to vulnerable and disabled individuals. On completion of the learnership, leaners are placed in various companies according to their abilities, skills, personalities, work ethics, etc. This assist the leaners and provide them with skills and opportunity to develop, grow and gain experience in the workplace. This will improve employment prospects of disabled individuals in the future when seeking desired employment.

The organisation supports vulnerable and disabled individuals in making change from training to being employed by focusing and seeking employment opportunities in various sectors and enable entrepreneurial opportunities for such individuals.

Our organisation has established training facility that provides integrated socio-economic solutions to companies that has an interest in employing individuals with disabilities. This facility provides opportunities and solution to skilled disabled individuals by providing them with training, skills development and employment within their desired business environment.

Disabled people should also be provided with opportunities to have access to education and training, employment and financial independence. Our organisation has created an opportunity for disabled individuals and is aiming to reduce the unemployment rate for these individuals by partnering with companies seeking to participate in employment of disabled individuals, offering learnership programmes, internships and experiential training.

Our organisation offers the following learnership and skills development programmes to disabled individuals:

• - Business Practice NQF Level 1
• - Life Skills NQF Level 1
• - New Venture Creation Skills Programme NQF Level 2
• - New Venture Creation Skills Programme NQF Level 3
• - End-user Computing NQF Level 3
• - Administration Management NQF Level 4
• - General Management NQF Level 4

The government has indicated that 2% of the total workforce should be represented by disabled individuals. But the belief and views towards disabled peopled remains a challenge as they are perceived as people with no ability or skill. Our organisation aims in changing the prejudice behind disabled people and in addressing this challenge. By employing disabled people, companies can partake and benefit from low employee turnover, economic incentives, dedicated and/or consistent employees as well as community recognition.

We have partnered with various private sector companies that have an interest in employing disabled individuals and offering learnership programme to them. We offer the following placement services for disable individuals:

• - Sourcing and screening
• - Interview of potential candidates
• - Pre-assessment
• - Assessments
• - Disability verification
• - Site audits
• - Workshops

Recruitment and placement of disabled people does not follow the similar process as normal process, per-assessment must always be conducted in order to ensure that the potential candidate is ready for learnership or skills programme so that learners can be guided to the correct career path.