Swaziland: Swazi Vessel-Career exposition

Swazi vessel is a career fair for students in the rural outskirts of Swaziland because they have noted that they do not perform well when they finish high school. This may be caused by lack ambitions because they have not achieved what they are passionate. They are often exposed to shallow information about the possible careers that they can follow in when they finish school. This initiative will help the high school students to be exposed to possible careers so that they can start working towards them through excelling in their studies and chose their subjects well.

The main aim is to bridge the gap of information between rural and urban high schools through the career exposition, the career exposition motivates the high school students to work hard. We work with motivational speakers who encourage students to persevering in life. The students are also taught sexual education which includes the dangers of engaging in sex while still young and how they can avoid such behavior. This information also helps the students to shape their future as they will be choosing one of the careers that they will be interested in. The main activities are:

• Grouping eight high schools from each region from the rural outskirts of Swaziland and convince them to attend career explosion
• Send out invitation to selected tertiary institutions inviting them to exhibit their services that they provide and also to organizations that will motivate the children
• Choose one school from the selected eight in each region central for all other schools
• Determine the venue for first stage of the expositions.
• Write a letter to the Police requesting for support.

The project has a sum of 1400 direct beneficiaries. Budgetary resources allocated to this project by the council is $348 with non-kind contributions. Quantitative evaluation is the number of tickets that will be bought by the students for the career exposition. With the tickets they will count how many females and males are interested in the exposition. The main challenge the group face include the shortage of funds for coordinating all the needed resources in order to implement the project. Another challenge include the finding the right partners for the project and also having disputes with the co-workers. Furthermore, In Swaziland there is a rapid rate of inflation, thus making it hard for the group to use the small funds they have to co-ordinate resources.

Zakhele Milton Simelane said “It is important for females and males to hear about issues that affect them in order to support each other”. The organization has been invited to the exposition to educate children in a presentation lasting 15 minutes and after, children will be free to visit their stall for further information. The initiative assisted men pertaining health issues in the sense of make circumcision helping males to become better men and fathers in the future. Changes at community level have been witnessed. For example children from the rural outskirts of the country have started researching on possible careers after being invited to attend such event.

The project is easy to replicate through making annual events and targeting less schools (eight per region) instead of including all the schools in rural areas of the country.