Social media marketing firm InsideMan and self-help web building tool VIGO have partnered to address Cape Town’s unemployment issues by offering people training to enable them to run their own web design businesses.
InsideMan and VIGO, run by Brian Mawdsley and Carl Wallace respectively, say #BizOP2015, which will start with three training sessions in Cape Town in January, will equip unemployed individuals with the ability to turn themselves into entrepreneurs and earn a starting salary of ZAR10,000 (US$860) per month.
Applicants will be trained on how to use the VIGO site building platform in order to build client websites, as well as business skills such as how to manage administration and sales processes.
The partners say individuals that have completed the training could charge ZAR2,500 (US$215) or more to build a website, and then earn ZAR50 (US$4) per month in passive income on hosting for the lifetime of the website.
“We’re basically putting in place a strategy where we would take on people that want to start their business and give them all the things they need from the start,” Mawdsley told Disrupt Africa.
“Once they have the skills they can do cool stuff with relatively little effort. We kind of spoonfeed as much as possible so that people can make a living at the end of the day. The beauty of VIGO is that you can build sites from your mobile.”
Three sessions of eight people will take place in Cape Town in January, with Mawdsley targeting between 100 and 150 people in the city by the end of 2015.
He said the programme had received responses from all over the country, and would roll out further once there was adequate demand from the likes of Johannesburg, Durban and Kimberley.
“When I get up to a reasonable number I will go to that place,” he said, adding that tackling unemployment in South Africa was one of the project’s main goals.
“One of Carl’s big driving reasons for being is sorting out this issue of unemployment. It is horrendous, we need to do what we can,” Mawdsley said.
