My Father’s House in collaboration with Simon’s Town police and the community policing forum (CPF) relaunched their blue bib project as a means to create job opportunities for informal parking attendants.
Dylan James, board secretary at My Father’s House, says the project was aimed at creating entry level jobs.
“The blue bib project is the community partnering with the police through My Father’s House to help reinvigorate the entry level job creation project.
“We are taking people who were just informal parking attendants and we are giving them an opportunity to grow.
“They will have access to social workers, they will have access to training and we are doing emergency first aid responder training with them.”
He added: “We are also doing training with them with wildlife, emergency rescue for sea birds. So they are basically the eyes and ears on the street.”
Around 15 people signed up at the relaunch that was held at Simon’s Town Police Station on Tuesday 13 September.
“We are looking for partners to help us equip them with cellphones that we can link them with all the Wi-Fi networks with all the shops up and down Simon’s Town, so that if they see someone have a heart attack they can go provide emergency first aid assistance but also alert the authorities if they see someone breaking into a car or see suspicious characters or see a penguin being hit. They are out there on the road,” says James.
The idea is to assist the individuals with further product knowledge via tourism training and to become embassadors of Simon’s Town.
“We are hoping that with the blue bib programme we can integrate people back into the formal economy.”
Tony Fiellies, a parking attendant who has been living in Simon’ Town for close to 14 years, says he has learnt various skills through the programme.
“I am a former prison gangster myself and have been living in Simon’s Town for 13 to 14 years. We used to be the pink bibs, but have now relaunched to blue bibs and we hope and pray that we are going to do a better job this time.
“The programme has helped us and teaches us a lot of things such as communication, business skills, life-orientation, how to present yourself in a business format and with structuring how to speak to people and address people and also welcoming people to Simon’s Town.”
He added that the programme has helped him to transform his life.
“For me coming from my background this is such a complete transformation and a complete change. I’ve been parking cars at Glencairn Beach for the past 13 years, I do have my own clientele as such and with the blue bibs I can say there is a vast difference because we are now being regulated by My Father’s House.
“Thanks to Dylan and My Father’s House, they have helped me so far.”
Simon’s Town Police Station commander Capt Vishnu Pillay says the relaunch was to recommit the individuals to safeguarding Simon’s Town.
“The relaunch of the blue bibs is to uplift these people. Basically the project was falling down, there was no commitment previously. Now we are re-committing them to their job to safeguard Simon’s Town and to be a watchful eye for the people and to reintegrate them.
“The people who are here are unemployed and from the Simon’s Town area.”
