The spotlight once again fell on Port Elizabeth as Deon Jonker from Cape Town, Marlene Odendal from Port Alfred, Anna Naude from Pretoria and Norman Heipel from Mozambique participated in a Scuba Schools International (SSI) Instructor Trainer course at the SSI Walmer, Port Elizabeth headquarters.
SSI is represented in more than 2500 Dive Centres worldwide and more than 110 countries. Run by Petra and Rainer Schimpf, SSI is the second largest dive training agency worldwide.
The 7 day course in which the trainees qualified to become “Ultimate Dive Educators”, was presented by Guido Waetzig, a shareholder of SSI Worldwide, who flew in from the SSI World Headquarters in Germany.
Becoming a SSI Instructor Trainer, is the highest dive qualification achieveable within SSI.
Rainer says; “Wwe now have a solid base of SSI Instructor Trainers within our territory (South Africa, Mauritius, Mozambique and NAmibia) and are able to offer training to a high level of education and training standards. SSI, being the only business orientated Dive Association, offers unique and highly developed business support systems. This secures a high quality in training and assures that all customers who learn to dive or do continuous dive education are trained at the highest standards in the dive industry. As SSI instructors it is possible to find work anywhere in the world and we guarantee that our candidates that pass with the highest possible scores during their training will find a job anywhere in a SSI affiliated Dive Centre.”
Guido Waetzig has presented several courses in South Africa and is convinced of the enormous growth potential of the diving industry within South Africa. Germany, for example, has more than 1 million qualified divers and continues growing by more than 5% per year.
South Africa with its approximately 3500 km of coastline, inland lakes and caves has a huge variety of warm and cold water and different conditions – ideal for swimming, diving and developing skills as SSI Instructor Trainers.
SSI offers courses in diving, freediving, swimming and marine guiding courses.
Alan Straton
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