Marthie Janse van Rensburg is the founder and owner of the Ekhuruleni Artisan and Skills Training Centre in Kempton Park, Gauteng.
The practical training centre offers employable skills training in boilermaking, rigging, pipefitting, welding, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, bricklaying, painting/decorating, CNC programming, air-conditioning and refrigeration, sheet metal work, fitting, glazing, French polishing and tiling.
Janse Van Rensburg believes she was destined to one day work in the artisan arena and was one of the first girls allowed to attend a technical high school. After high school she completed a course in small business studies, but it was not until 2006 that her passions collided and she established what is now a thriving artisan training centre.
She started the training centre in a borrowed space at the back of a factory in 2006 with her father as her first instructor and within a month they were searching for bigger premises due to the high demand.
“Soon after that I quit my fulltime job and we have expanded and grown from strength to strength. This year we are celebrating our 10th year of business,” says Janse van Rensburg. “I never doubted that it would not work out, but our growth has far exceeded our projections.”
From humble beginnings, today the centre’s property keeps expanding to accommodate the high demand for its services. “We started out with one building, but have had to extend our premises and have added three more sites and are currently busy with a fourth site. We also have accommodation facilities for our clients who come from all over Africa as well as neighbouring companies. We even have clients who came all the way from Pakistan to join us,” she explains.
The centre offers practical15-day courses designed to equip participants with employable skills. It was established in response to the large number of people who, without decent education, are unemployed and often unemployable.
“Our courses offer an immediate solution. If someone comes here to do a course in plumbing, for example, after three weeks they have skills that can give them access to job opportunities which did not exist for them before. Often they go out and set up their own small businesses, so it is a way to deal with our massive unemployment problem as our courses are entrepreneur friendly,” says Janse van Rensburg.
The centre has partnered with the Gauteng Department of Economic Development so that once the artisans complete their training they can join programmes and initiatives offered by the department to boost small businesses.
For Janse van Rensburg, the fact that she is a woman in a male-dominated industry is irrelevant. “Doesn’t matter if you are a woman or a man, you must know the space you are active in and people will respect you for that,” she explains. “I have never felt undermined and would never allow that. It is all about belief, character and ethics. Business is tough for everybody and you have to stand your ground, but if you are doing something you care about it makes it easier.”
Under her watch, the centre has seen 24 000 people come through its doors for various training courses, and she considers the centre to be a platform to change people’s lives. Through the centre Janse van Rensburg is launching a Skill for Life campaign, a youth development programme that will see a group of 20 young people from a particular area being sponsored for training and personal development for eight weeks. At the end of this period they will return to their communities and renovate the homes of a group of identified elderly residents.
“Through this project we want to reprogramme young people to protect and build their communities. Artisans are the cornerstone of developing any community,” she says.
Since winning the award in 2015 the centre has received a lot of publicity and exposure, which Janse Van Rensburg feels is vital for the success of any business.
In 2014, she led the company to victory in the Proudly South African Enterprise category at the SAPBA and has previously been a finalist in the SA Business Woman of the Year awards.
