YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT 

Youth unemployment is a huge problem we are facing as a nation and it affects everything around us including our economy, the share price and everything else in that lane. Stats shows that 98% of South African kids gets the opportunity to go school but only 90% of those kids go to high school and from that 90% only 52% make it to universities and higher education institutions and from that 48% only 26% graduate  and only 19% gets employed for what they actually studied for.

Illiteracy is one of the major contributors to youth unemployment because not all of us get the opportunity to make it to the higher education level and that makes it difficult for companies to hire us. Another thing is lack of skills because, not all of us are meant for school and that results a lot of drop outs. We are all gifted in various ways but all focusing on the education we get from school. I mean school shouldn’t be our only hope. You get people that are good with their hands and those are the people that needs to start up their own companies and create employment but, because they are not made aware of their opportunities, only a few gets to stand on their feet and make a move.

After realizing that lack of skills is one of the major contributors to youth unemployment, we decided we were going give those skills to one specific school to see how it works out. So our targeted audience were learners from grade 8-12 because we believe that’s the right time for one to discover their strengths and weaknesses. The plan was to get together with FET colleges(Central Johannesburg College) and help the learners discover what it is that they really good at, at an early stage and that’s exactly what we did. And with that, they get to take part in a six months Saturday program for a specific course and afterwards they get a certificate to say, they did take part.

The campaign is a success because even though we haven’t got to the six months yet, the learners are still participating in the programs and they are enjoying them. This means that even if they decide to further their education after matric, they will have an education together with a skill and, if they are unable to father their studies they still have something to fall back on and can start their own thing.