Palace Group supports take a girl child to work day
Palace Group hosts Ivory Park learners
The theme for the 11th Cell C led Take a Girl Child to Work day "Empower a girl, empower a nation" was fitting for this year considering all the challenges faced by women in our society, especially girls in school. Palace Group's core values includes empowering the previously disenfranchised and women are one of the groups in our society who must be given support.
Cell C says that the Take a Girl Child to Work Day® is targeted at Grade 10 to 12 South African girl learners, giving them the opportunity to visit a place of work and to experience first-hand, the “world of work” and various career opportunities available in industry and within the public service sectors.
In support of this initiative we spent at least five hours with the selected top 20 learners from Ivory Park Secondary school at one of our offices, in New Road, Midrand. It is worth noting that Palace Group has supported the initiative since 2008, when we hosted our first girl learners at our Sandton office. Following that success, in 2009, we took the group from that year to our Centurion office, where we have technologists and engineers who are responsible for some ground-breaking innovative systems. In 2013, the idea was to expose the learners to other professions, and to this end, our environmental solutions firm, Gondwana accepted an invite to participate. So did our very well informed and bright engineers and architects at our New Road Midrand office.
The Group Executive, Strategic Communications, CSR and CI (Zanele Mlambo, pictured below far left) was inclined to encourage the girls never to give up on their dreams and emphasised that discipline was an ingredient that sustains one's entire life course. Mlambo further shared her own personal experiences on her early work life, where she worked for little or no pay at all in order to gain that valuable real work experience.
The architecture division staff, quantity surveyor, engineers and draughtspersons (Andile, Makhosi, Brian, Arnold, Tshepo and Charmaine) all contributed to a more live demonstration of what goes on behind the scenes in their day-to day lives.
Chrizelle (below far right) shared some great insights into the environmental profession, highlighting her work and the challenges faced, especially as there are few such professional in the country yet the industry needs these even more as we seek to create a better world for tomorrow. She was inspiring in a fresh and authentic manner.
