#GIVINGTUESDAY Campaign | Job Creation | Fight Against Gender-Based Violence!

#GIVINGTUESDAY – Due To Covid-19 Pandemic Gender-Based Violence is High.

 

To help young people, women, and people with disability to be the leaders, designers, creatives and innovators to create employment and plan in rural and informal settlements.

Across the country, young people, women, and people with disability tell us daily about the barriers they face when looking for empowerment and work.
Across the country, young people tell us daily about the barriers they face when looking for work. Stuck in the transition between education and jobs, many are without certificates to show for their years of schooling.

They lack the psychosocial support and the social capital necessary to find work and are unable to afford the costs of job-seeking. Young people’s lives are at odds with the far too often top-down, inflexible solutions to unemployment. With the youth unemployment rate at 58.2%, the highest rate in the last decade, the need for a cohesive plan informed by young people’s experiences has become more pressing than ever before.

To ensure that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, announced during his the State of the Nation address, does not become just another list of lofty plans, we must ensure the experiences of young people, women and people with disability are prioritised in its design and delivery. This six-point plan aims to change the way young South Africans get access to employment opportunities.

1. #GIVINGTUESDAY – Creating a national pathway management network.

 

The network, which aims to provide work seekers with access to a basic package of support and work-readiness training to better match them to economic opportunities, does well in recognising how young people struggle to navigate the labour market and signal their skill sets to potential employers. Likewise, employers struggle to sift through thousands of CVs to find the right young people to match their jobs.

The network needs to support people to also connect to irregular or informal jobs, and help them grow and leverage their skills in the labour market through a range of experiences on the way to a decent job.

We need to also ensure that the support package extends beyond CV writing and interview skills. Many young people are kept out of the labour market because of a lack of childcare, having to look after family members with poor health, and a lack of resources to pay for the printing of CVs, transport to interviews or browsing online for jobs.
Many have already experienced years of rejection and the mental health burden of this cannot be overstated.

If the network and basic package of support are to make a significant dent, it must offer psychosocial and healthcare assistance, as well as cellphone data allocation.

There are a number of organisations whose expertise should be leveraged: JobStarter, for example, delivers data-light work-readiness courses through cellphones, while Action Volunteers Africa offers a holistic journey for volunteers, from training to employment, including support on managing their finances and breaking through negative self-beliefs.

2. Developing skills in key growth sectors.

 

The plan’s second priority aims to equip young people with the skills to access opportunities in key growth sectors, such as the food, green and waste economies. While targeting these skills is crucial, any conversation about upskilling must include discussions about the low rate of completion across all levels of our skills system.

Whether it is the 50% of people who leave school without a matric certificate, the unknown high number who don’t complete technical and vocational education and training college qualifications, or the 40% that don’t finish their degrees.

  • DGMT DONATED with kick-start injection funds of the Human factor project.
  • UNITED WAY SA donated food National in disadvantaged communities.

#GIVINGTUESDAY – WE REQUEST DONATIONS TO EXTEND TO OTHER PROVINCES.

We have developed a catch-up strategy for those who’ve been left behind. How are our learners expected to excel in subjects like coding and robotics if they cannot read and count?

If we are to respond and get all learners and students on track, we need tools such as the department of basic education’s Data-Driven Districts project, to more effectively track learners through basic education and identify when they drop out, triggering support to get them back on track. The current data systems for the college sector are virtually unusable for gathering intelligence on how students are doing. Reports on the overall performance of the sector are released two years after the fact.

We need the right data to ensure we can immediately respond to major issues in our education and skills institutions.

3. Innovative ways to support youth entrepreneurship.

 

The Presidential Youth Employment Intervention’s entrepreneurship support prioritizes removing barriers and creating spaces to help businesses thrive by making data affordable and targeting sectors that are ripe for innovation. We welcome the Competition Commission’s recommended deep cuts to data pricing, the president’s announcement of discounts, daily data allocations and the zero-rating of educational websites.

Each month, young people spend on average R380 on data looking for work — and with 8.2-million young South Africans not in employment, education or training, this issue requires urgent resolution.

However, beyond removing this constraint, the reality is that innovation-driven entrepreneurship is unlikely to be a panacea for youth employment without also connecting young people to precedent-setting opportunities to gain work exposure. The lack of exposure to the world of work is a major stumbling block for this initiative.

Most young people find opportunities through someone they know, yet two out of every five 15- to 24-year-olds live in a household without an employed adult.

Youth need guidance as much as they need infrastructure, and so what is needed is a national drive to connect people across the poles of society, and to expose young people to opportunity through simple, powerful, connections.

4. The Youth Employment Initiative.

 

Funded by the national budget, this initiative includes grant funding and business support by the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) and the department of small business development for 1 000 young entrepreneurs in the first 100 days after the State of the Nation address in the field of youth development.

Siyakholwa Recovery plan is to add 45000 job opportunities national(Cleaning of streets, Renovations of RDP houses, Mobile Community Field workers assisting elders, sick, disabled people, health care taking etc., ECD volunteers with stipends, )

5. Practical experience for young people.

 

The president plans to scale up the Youth Employment Service (YES), a business-led partnership with government and labour to assist young people to gain work experience to progress into the job market. To add and engage with more opportunities Siyakholwa has established softs skills development Training (Computer classes, Farming training, baking and chef training, Shoe making and Sewing, Recycling and carpeting, Design, flowers arranging and Décor, music beginners and dancing, etc)

 

GIVINGTUESDAY Campaign | Job Creation | Fight Against Gender Based Violence!

6. The Presidential Youth Service Programme.

 

This priority expands on the National Youth Service programme, promoting work opportunities for young people who are willing to give back to their communities. Given the number of socioeconomic issues facing our country, advancing the employability of young people through volunteer jobs in the social and care sector is a win-win.

We have developed structures of the Community Work Programme and people have been increasing access to early childhood development, and running reading clubs through nongovernmental organisations such as Siyakholwa, SmartStart and Nal’ibali.

Participating in such initiatives can be an even greater win for young people if they are provided with strong mentorship, reference letters and support to navigate pathways into future careers.

To add more to these initiatives:

We have managed to assist 240 youth and women to open ECD centres in Informal settlements and we are busy assisting them in registering as partial care. Youth to open a car wash, salons, small Bakers, Fashion Design, Blocks and paving making small business. We managed to help 292 needy to start their home gardens (Training and start-up seeds were provided) we have an SME hub to assist with business registering and mentorship for a startup in rural and informal settlements national.

Addressing a youth dialogue, we are willing to change the way that youth behaviour in disadvantaged communities by changing their plans to be creative and innovated to do things differently”.

We couldn’t agree more. Let’s work together and use the voices, viewpoints and experiences of young people as the starting point and driving force behind each of the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention’s priorities to ensure the intervention goes from plan to progress. This automatically decreases gender-based Violence actions.

Sandy Phillips is the project lead for the Youth Capital campaign, which connects research and young people’s views and experiences to build a collective driving an agenda for youth employment.

Let’s drive a spike of unity and generosity: Share how you’re giving back by using the hashtag #GivingTuesday and join us in this global wave of good!

Donate directly to Siyakholwa Support Care Centre.

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Tel: +27 (0) 82 049 3094
 

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