Youth in Region D exposed to a wide range of opportunities
"There is no nation that will have a stake in the future if it doesn't invest in the youth
The City of Johannesburg Region D had held an open day at Noordgesig community hall last week.
It was aimed at providing residents with a wide range of opportunities on how to find employment and to start up their own business.
Ten stakeholders namely; Lulaway, National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), Productivity SA, Department of Labour, Harambee, Jozi SME Hub, Tshepo One Million, SANCA and others gave presentations on opportunities that are readily available for the youth.
Guest speaker Ally Sithole who is a youth development worker said their aim is to ensure that young people from the City of Johannesburg are presented with opportunities to participate in all decision making in the city.
“Youth development programmes cannot be about young people without them, so everything for young people must be about young people and with young people.
“There can never be a development that does not involve young people, we have to include you in the developments projects,” said Sithole.
Sithole said someone once said there is no nation that will have a stake in the future if it doesn’t invest in the youth.
“My role here today is to speak about the importance of youth development in the society. There is a tendency in the society that youth issues must be treated as second best. They do everything and later they say what about young people,” he said.
According to Sithole, the CoJ has taken a decision that it must have a programme called Youth Based Training.
“That means youth development must be everybody’s responsibility,” said Sithole.
Sithole said the youth must not ask for the right to be involved in programmes because they are already involved.
“You must not wait for the councillor to call the meeting you as the youth must call her to come to your meetings. You don’t wait for opportunities you create your own opportunity and if you wait for someone to help you, then you will wait forever.
“Young people must be on the forefront of developments. We were young once and will never be young again,” explained Sithole.
Sithole urged the youth to ensure that they must mobilise themselves and create their own thinking about the future.
“Because the future belongs to you and if you don’t do that the country will die in your hands. Young people are the heritage of South Africa,” said Sithole.
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