The Yes2Day youth employment service was launched in Sandton to help provide businesses with a unique solution to get involved in providing youth with workplace experience.
Raizcorp and Lulaway, businesses which are focused on creating entrepreneurship and employment, have created the Yes2Day to unlock the potential of the Youth Employment Service which was launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa last year.
The Youth Employment Service aims to create new 12-month work opportunities for one million young South Africans. The Yes2Day programme will focus on this initiative and will help with the recruitment, placement and management of the youths.
Allon Raiz, the CEO of Raizcorp, said that small businesses are generally quite scared to employ people because they are fearful of being taken to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration if the job does not work out well. Another fear that they have is the cost of hiring employees. Through the Yes2Day programme, larger businesses can absorb the costs of employing people in smaller business and provide the youth with necessary experience in the field.
While many large businesses have pledged to create work opportunities for the youth however don’t necessarily have the capacity to have those youths in one workplace.
“The idea is to take these unemployed youth that are paid for by corporates and place them appropriately within small businesses,” said Raiz.
Tashmia Ismail-Saville, the CEO of the Youth Employment Service, painted a bleak picture of the impact that unemployment has had on the country and the impact that it will continue to have if it is not addressed. However, she said that through the Yes programme, on average, about 650 people a week have been provided jobs in the past 16 weeks.
“The design of Yes starts to look at how we spread the love, how do we spread the love and how do we invest in a way that begins to address inequality… Growth depends on everybody in an economy working together,” said Ismail-Saville.
She emphasised that some work experience, as well as a CV and a reference letter, drastically improves a person’s chance of obtaining employment and Yes provides that.
Jake Willis, CEO of Lulaway, said, “Yes will transform South Africa’s economy and its youth – if it is adopted on a wide scale and implemented successfully. Our experiences have shown that corporates simply do not have the resources demanded to manage such programmes. Yes2Day will have the operational expertise, industry knowledge and human resources to roll this out nationally.”
Details: Yes2Day info@yes2day.co.za
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