“Howzit” The first days at Voys SA

Destination, Cape Town! While walking out the arrivals, I saw a man with a sign in his hand with my name on it, he said: “Goeiemôre Kristel?! Hoe gaan dit met jou?”. Welkom in Afrika! That moment; I fell in love with the African culture. Two other students stepped into the back of the taxi, and me? I took the front seat. As confident as I can be, I stepped in to the right side of the taxi. The driver laughed and asked: “Who is driving today?!”I feel very honored to be the first intern at Voys South Africa and that I may introduce myself through this blog. I’m really not an expert writer, however, I’ve done my very best to make it as pleasant as possible for you to read 🙂

My name is Kristel van de Wolfshaar and I’m currently a third-year International, Business and Languages student at the Avans University of Applied Sciences of Den Bosch, the Netherlands. I have chosen to conduct my third-year internship at Voys South Africa, located in Cape Town. My focus areas of the internship are; researching, maintaining social media and blogging. When people ask me what I study at university, I normally just stick to economics and languages as it’s the main area I study. However, when I look at the big picture, I have covered way more than that in just three years, from marketing, statistics and project management to business economics and export strategies. I am hoping to put these learnings in practice with managing a marketing campaign. In July I went to Voys NL in Groningen, the Netherlands, to get acquainted with Voys. Here, I got to see the business culture, colleagues and work environment. I had already heard about the Voys model and ‘working without managers’, but initially, I didn’t believe in it. This thought quickly changed during my stay as I was impressed by the good and positive relationship between employees, new projects, big challenges, individual goals as well as group-oriented goals. After two interesting and motivating days at Voys NL, I was ready for take-off! The first days at Voys SA gave me a warm welcoming feeling. With my own desk, the Voys manual and some nice African keychains. Sebastiaan and Athini are excited to have me join the team and are willing to help me with everything. For the next coming weeks, I will be busy with my research; comparing the customer satisfaction of Voys NL and Voys SA, which will result in me giving recommendations on how to optimise the current communication of Voys SA. Why South Africa? I knew pretty much from the outset that I wanted to go to South Africa – it’s one of the major markets for the industry I want to be part of and I felt that I would gain a lot more knowledge and skills in the field by coming here. Baie Dankie Kristel van de Wolfshaar