The year kicked off on a busy note with the growing demand for Double Impact (DI) training sessions. We have conducted a total of 5 DI sessions already this year, with more sessions already scheduled for the coming few months. Those members who are interested in receiving a personalised presentation on the aims and benefits of the training can contact me via email on nloeto@creditombud.org.za or on 011 781 6431 in order to set up appointments.
We have interacted with Genesis Analytics, an internationally renowned economics research organisation, who have shown an interest in sampling some of the work that we have done thus far in the DI training and are looking at benchmarking some of the studies they conduct with results from our training. This definitely is a sign that we are tapping the correct buttons with the training that we offer.
Our diary is packed this March as we celebrate Consumer Rights Month in our country. We have teamed up with a few of our stakeholders in order to provide much needed information to consumers by conducting consumer education drives throughout the month.
Our partnership with the National Credit Regulator (NCR) has evolved into the education space, with our office partnering with the NCR on their ‘Know your Status’ Campaign as part of Consumer Rights Month activities. We have so far visited the Western Cape and Limpopo provinces and will visit the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga in the coming weeks, reaching out to thousands of consumers at malls and shopping centres.
We have this year also partnered with Consumer Affairs North West in a bid to educate public servants in the various districts of the province on credit and finance related matters.
We are delighted to have the opportunity to reach out to Community Development Workers through our collaboration with Black Sash in Gauteng. We hope to see this partnering move to other branch offices all over the country.
2013 was a fruitful year as we continued to spread the word about the work our office does in different communities. Our total exposure in the media for the year amounted to just over R24 million, this achieved in radio, television, online and print media. We hope to continue on this path and reach even more audiences through our media programmes.
Last year we conducted a total of 37 workshops, which were more focussed on reaching out to credit active consumers, accessing them at their places of employment. We have seen this shift in focus bear fruit and wish to continue to grow workshops in this area as well.
Our project with Consumer Affairs Gauteng to roll out our education workshops to public sector employees in the various districts within GPG started with a workshop for all the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) Practitioners within the province on 18 February. We look forward to rolling out the workshops to the rest of the employees as the year progresses.
