MCM partners with University of Stellenbosch!

Over the course of the last 6 months, 5 college students from the University of Stellenbosch business school have been working with MCM (Monte Christo Miqlat).  As part of the Senior Management Development programme offered by the university, students needed to form groups to complete a BDAL (Business Driven Action Learning) project.  More specifically the project required the students to identify an NGO that was in need of improving its performance.  During the course of their research, they were to 1) analyse the organisation, 2) formulate a strategy that would enhance the organisation's performance and 3) present the organisation with an implementation plan for the newly developed strategy. 

 

University of Stellenbosch students with MCM team

Back Row: Chantal Hanslo, Julien & Dawid Adams (Bowy House), Khalipha Ramahlape, Latiefa Behardien

Front row: Shaun Cupido, Ravell Roberts, Aletia Grundling (MCM CEO)

One of those aforementioned groups chose MCM's Bowy House as the focal point for their assignment.  Beginning on 24 March 2012, the students immersed themselves in the project and applied the business research methodology that they had gained in the classroom to help them make informed decisions in a 'real world' scenario.  Part of their research included an environmental scan which took a look at practices both internal and external to Bowy House.  They also completed a thorough SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis which provided more insights to the group.  

University of Stellenbosch group presentation

On 6 September 2012, the students presented their findings to the MCM management team.  The presentation was quite professional and gave us some very specific suggestions that would directly improve the long term sustainability of the ministry. In fact, the management team decided to go forward with implementation of some of the key recommendations right away! The time and effort put forward was of great value to the ministry.

On behalf of the University of Stellenbosch team, one of the students said "thank you, once again, for allowing us to use Bowy House as our BDAL topic.  We really learned a lot from your organisation and hope that our dissertation will add value to the future sustainability of Bowy House."  Thys Pretorius, the student's lecturer, echoed those remarks and shared "the students completed the dissertation and presentation with great success."

MCM would like to thank the University of Stellenbosch as well as the students (Chantal, Hanslo, Khalipha Ramahlape, Latiefa Behardien, Shaun Cupido and Ravell Roberts) and lecturer, Thys Pretorius, for the time they spent with us and the value they added to help us complete our strategic plan for Bowy House.