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Geekulcha launches College Month 2020

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 01 Sept 2020

South Africa’s ICT skills shortage is well documented.

Youth ICT organisation, Geekulcha believes this shortage can be addressed by creating a

stronger digital culture, making national digital transformation more inclusive, co-ordinated skills development efforts and by making industry players more responsive to local needs.

Established in 2013, the youth platform has always aimed to create platforms encouraging industry innovation and creativity. However, a key concern has been reaching college students. Geekulcha believes in grooming the future captains of industry through the Geekulcha Student Society (GKSS) initiative which has 23 chapters in eight provinces. With only five GKSS chapters in 50 registered TVET colleges, the organisation admits there’s stillwork to do.

It is against this backdrop that the organisation has dubbed September ‘Geekulcha College Month’, dedicated to helping college students better navigate the ICT sector. Previous activities include hackathons, field trips and work integrated learning for industry exposure.

College Month’s focus areas include:

● Further understanding of students in FET colleges -- their challenges, shortfalls

and prospects in fully participating in the ICT space.

● A skills development drive and exposure to latest shifts in the ICT sector

● Establishing more GKSS chapters especially in remote TVET FET colleges to drive

student Tech and Innovation on campus.

● Making use of the Hire Geeks programme to expose and enable students in FET

colleges.

● Engaging with campus managers in mapping out the pipeline, developmental pathways and creation of open source student innovation challenges.

Follow #GKCollegeMonth on social media for profiles on the work that has been done in FET Colleges.

FET students are invited to get their campus 'Geekulcha’d' here.

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