Nurturing and guiding our future leaders is of fundamental importance to aha. We want to play a vital role in initiatives that involve shaping the minds of young people and showing them the opportunities that are available to them through education. Our goal is to emphasise the importance of education and encourage our learners to pursue careers that they are passionate about.

aha annually hosts Grade 10 learners from Kwena Molapo Secondary School through our the ‘Host a learner’ initiative. The school is two kilometres from Lanseria Airport. The school enrolled about 60% of the learners from Diepsloot informal settlements, 38% come from the Thabo Mbeki informal settlements and 2% from around the Lanseria plots.

The ‘Host a learner’ campaign is not gender biased, and includes female and male children.

Ten enthusiastic learners visited our head office in Rivonia and spent a few hours in the workplace to experience the various career opportunities available in the business. The HR team gave the learners an extensive tour of aha where they interacted with professionals in various departments such as Human Resources and Learning and Development, Finance, Procurement, Business Development, Legal and Marketing and Sales to understand the different functions of each department and they gained considerable insight into the different career responsibilities.

The HR team also provided them with insightful presentations and career guiding information. aha Group HR Manager, Nando Legasa says : “There are so many career opportunities that young people are not even aware of. Most students are only aware of the obvious traditional career choices and that is usually the basis of how they choose their subjects in grade 10. This often leads to mundane career choices and sometimes failure. If you ask working people how many of them actually love what they do, very few will answer yes. We ultimately hope to equip these young people with enough information and exposure to make the right decision regarding their future career aspirations.”

“We also hope to simultaneously steer them toward the tourism and hospitality industry with its countless career opportunities,” concludes Legasa.