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Tony Mays reports on a current Saide project to support an NGO working with the so-called “NEET” generation of young people.
According to the White Paper on Post-School Education and Training (p.7), there are 3.4 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24 who are neither in employment nor in education and training (the so-called “NEET” generation). Many of these young people have completed high school and received a National Senior Certificate but this has not opened doors to employment. In many instances the certificate received also does not meet the entry requirements for higher education and training and/or candidates lack the finances to do so.
One organisation which is doing useful work to provide opportunities for young people who find themselves caught in the NEET category is Harambee. Harambee recognises businesses’ concerns about the risks of employing first-time workers. To reduce these risks, they have developed a bespoke model that, working on a large scale, sources, trains and places unemployed young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into first-time jobs. In South Africa, employers struggle to find entry-level staff with the behaviours, ability, interest and attitude needed to perform in their specific business. But Harambee’s track record shows that it can successfully supply motivated and valuable employees from a previously untapped talent pool, while improving retention rates and lowering human resource and training costs. Harambee’s tailor-made bridging programmes seek to ensure that new staff have the confidence, skills, and functional behaviour to do more than just a job – they have the potential to build a career.
Harambee is currently exploring alternative modalities for learning to enable it to:
- implement a “Step-Up” learning programme for a wider pool of young work-seekers, who narrowly miss the Harambee thresholds for existing job placements and bridging programmes;
- test learning modalities that will enable Harambee to deliver scalable quality learning at a reduced cost.
Harambee have contracted Saide to support this process.
As an initial approach, Harambee wanted to consolidate the organisation’s understanding related to available content, learner management systems, delivery and access for platforms, and access to technology for unemployed youth, particularly in relation to spoken language and numeracy skills. Building an understanding of these elements would enable the Harambee team, with support from Saide, to apply their candidate knowledge to design a range of pilots to test the effectiveness of the different piloted approaches.
To date, the Harambee-Saide partnership has designed and reflected upon three small-scale ‘experimental’ designs each of which has resulted in opening opportunities for some candidates who would not otherwise have accessed the Harambee placement and bridging programmes. In the next intervention, we will be exploring ways in which digital content, combined with access to computers and with support from peers and coaches, can help develop candidates’ numeracy skills for a larger group of about 200 candidates. Simultaneously, Harambee is exploring three different models for the development of candidates’ spoken English language skills in line with employers’ needs for front-line staff generally, as well as for opportunities available in specific sectors such as call centres.
If you have suggestions about resources and models for the effective development of the oral/aural language and numeracy skills of young people who may have completed schooling but not well enough to access employment or post-school education and training, we would be interested to hear from you. Please send an email to Tony Mays at tonym@saide.org.za.
In September 2013, Harambee was a co-host of a conference discussing the challenges of youth unemployment which was attended by Tony Mays and Greig Krull from Saide. Tony provides feedback on the conference. |
