RLabs breaking barriers

What an exciting week ahead for the Reconstructed Living Lab with RLabs not only breaking the 45,000 conversations mark in the Substance Abuse Mobile Counselling service and training over 300 community members in Social Media, but the team will also be managing the Social Media activities for the World Bank.

Innovation Fair: Moving beyond Conflict from WBI Innovation on Vimeo.

The World Bank is hosting the Innovation Fair in Cape Town this week and approached RLabs (Thanks to Rafiq from Webaddicts) to come on board as their Social Media partner. These activities will be done via the Social Media Factory a RLabs inititiave. This is definitely more barriers being broken by the RLabs team who are all community members who were reconstructed through technology. This is another milestone as the RLabs community are planning to grow the activities to the Eastern Cape, United Kingdom, Namibia and South-East Asia this year.

Where is this journey still going to take me?

Today RLabs was priviliged to host a group of amazing individuals from the University of Amsterdam Business School who are currently busy with their Executive Masters in Information Management. The group have been doing a week of training and the project is part of a collaboration with UCT Graduate School of Business. Being part of this programme not only provided our team an opportunity to share experiences and stories but also learn from an amazing group of individuals who are adding value to their various organisations daily.

I had the privilege of doing a presentation together with Craig Ross about the “Art of Mobile Counseling”. Today I found myself presenting this new form of counseling to people who probably had more degrees than a thermometer and the great thing about it is that in this instance I was the expert. Who would have thought that a group of ex gangsters and drug addicts could add value to or impart knowledge into the lives of a group of highly qualified individuals from Europe?

What has God still got in store for this group of young men and women who once gave up hope on themselves thinking they would probably all die “druggies”…

Join me in the next episode in my journey, God bless.

Posted from "From the balcony"

Mobile Counselling Training by The Reconstructed

In collaboration with the Department of Social Development and Impact Direct Ministries, the RLabs team hosted the world's first Mobile Counselling Course to a group of particpants from various Non profit and Community based organisations. The focus of the training was to empower these organisations to make use of mobile phones as part of their counselling services. The training was managed by our mobile counselling specialists who covered a wide range of topics over the three days ranging from the "Art of Mobile Counselling" to "Confessions of a Mobile Counsellor".

The new mobile counsellors were also introduced to the system that will be used for the mobile counselling activities. The excitement by the participants and orgsanisations involved was a clear indication that using mobile counselling as part their support services to clients could add value to their service delivery. This is especially the case for organisations working with youth who use mobile phones daily for engagement with friends and family. The training was only the beginning of the journey and the next few weeks we have to roll it out to schools that could benefit of Drug Mobile Counselling Services.