Partnership seeks practical ways to empower youth
ROSEBANK – A centre and a youth development lab formed a partnership to build an ecosystem of innovation that supports a young person's transition from education to employment.
A partnership event held at the Impact Hub in Rosebank sought ways to get young South African people economically active. The partnership between the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Cape Town and youth development lab Lucha Lunako launched a new Youth Innovation Partnership.
Founder of Lucha Lunako Alana Bond said the youth development lab had begun as a result of an observation over many years of the growing concern over lack of substantial change in South Africa. This lack of change is in terms of youth development, given the amount of money invested in that space as the lab observed; therefore, they started to propose a different theory of change.
Sharing a few statistics, Bond said, “We have 27 per cent of our population aged 20 to 24. We have 6.7 million unemployed people in SA and 3.8 million of these are between the ages of 15 and 24; 58.2 per cent of youth between those ages are unemployed, with the majority being female. There are 17 times more registered jobseekers than vacancies advertised.”
She said that notwithstanding university graduates still have the best employment opportunities in the country with job creation having increased by 49 per cent over the last 10 years. “At this rate of job creation, it will take us another 30 years to eliminate unemployment. That’s assuming that the population will remain static and all the unemployed people could be suitably skilled. This is an indicator that SA is a slow job creator.”
The Youth Innovation Partnership, which kicked off with a workshop in Philippi Village, Cape Town, aims to surface existing strategies that are successfully addressing these challenges and to build these out into a collaborative youth development framework that is practical and actionable.
Tumy Motsoatsoe facilitated the panel discussion and posed questions to the panel members. Phathuxolo Nzimande who participated in some of the organisation’s youth development programmes said he observed that the youth wanted to bring change to communities but they did not know where to start.
Young social entrepreneur Kwandile Sikhosana said it was very important for a country to plan realistically and have an idea of what’s going on within the communities so as to know where to send funds. “For example, we have a lot of people flocking to Gauteng assuming it is the only province with opportunities.
“However, the Northern Cape has one of the biggest solar industries; why not capitalise on that by empowering the youth there with relevant skills for opportunities?”
More information and collaborations were shared throughout the workshop with insightful suggested solutions toward youth development.
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