Deaf-owned company eDeaf is celebrating its first 18 members’ successful completion of Corporate MBAs (cCMBAs).
Established in 2007, eDeaf provides skills development and business training with the goal of empowering Deaf communities.
Through their partnered solutions approach with SkillsTown, eDeaf made learning accessible to the Deaf by converting all the training material into South African Sign Language (SASL).
eDeaf strives to provide the open labour market with trained and skilled deaf people who are ready to become part of the mainstream economy.
eDEAF marketing and communications manager Nicky Bezuidenhout pointed out that accessible deaf education is still scarce in the country.
With deaf people being marginalised due to not being able to hear, they are often regarded as incompetent or unintelligent, not fit to be employed.
eDeaf aims to challenge this and reinforce the idea that any member of the Deaf community is as equally capable of achieving their goals as their hearing counterparts.
“We are delighted that this platform truly enables equal access to education for the Deaf community,” said Bezuidenhout.
According to eDeaf, while the cMBA does not replace the traditional MBA, which is academic and scientific, it focuses on offering a scalable, practical leadership development programme to develop all levels of management.
The eight-month programme covered eight modules including: management and leadership, sales and marketing, organisation, strategy, innovation, human resource management, and finance.
A special graduation ceremony was held at the eDeaf head office in Braamfontein, where each graduate was presented with their certificate of completion.
SkillsTown managing director Bart Hogendoorn said he felt honoured and proud to be a part of the graduation ceremony.
“I seldom experience an event where the participants of a learning programme show so much gratitude towards each other and the team. Their sheer joy and pride in celebrating the finalisation of this programme was incredibly heart-warming,” said Hogendoorn.
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