YOUTH AND JOB TRAINING
![Picture](/uploads/1/5/5/6/15569104/9491096.jpg?378)
Credit: IICD/Creative Commons
CHALLENGE
The youth in South Africa, "make up more than half the country's population under the age of 24. They are experiencing a significant unemployment and a skills gap crisis. In 2010, the jobless rate among 15 to 24 year-old was 51 percent or twice the national unemployment rate. To make matters worse, a significant skills gap among young job seekers, coupled with the fact that 42 percent drop out of school before completing their secondary education. As a result, young people are looking at potentially impassable cross road; with devastating effects on their prospects for becoming productive, engaged citizens.
THE INITIATIVE
To help address these barriers to youth employment:
-KLCT seeks to promote services that include technical training in key job categories, holistic life skills training, and post-training support for entering the labor market.
-KLCT will encourage programs that will strengthen and extend the duration of job training in targeted growth sectors resulting in more extensive skills development benefits to participants;
-KLCT will solicit linkages with local companies to ensure the relevance of the program's curriculum and create opportunities for mentoring, internships and job placements for the graduates.
-KLCT will ensure the programs' participants will receive a total of 24 weeks of hands-on training focused on preparing them to acquire certification as electricians, welders, automotive mechanics, bookkeepers and plumbers.
-A life skills component will be integrated into the technical training which will cover such topics as work force readiness, community and work, and self-sufficiency.
-Upon graduation, the trainees will register with the job and career counseling offices where they will receive on-going support in finding internship and job opportunities, as well as CV writing, interview preparation and other job-seeking skills."(1)
All these strategies in educating and training must help the ... "youth at risk to move from being unskilled or redundant in one kind of economy to contribute productively to a new economy based on social justice and ecological
sustainability." (2)
1) iynet.org; 2) Dr Eureta Rosenberg
The youth in South Africa, "make up more than half the country's population under the age of 24. They are experiencing a significant unemployment and a skills gap crisis. In 2010, the jobless rate among 15 to 24 year-old was 51 percent or twice the national unemployment rate. To make matters worse, a significant skills gap among young job seekers, coupled with the fact that 42 percent drop out of school before completing their secondary education. As a result, young people are looking at potentially impassable cross road; with devastating effects on their prospects for becoming productive, engaged citizens.
THE INITIATIVE
To help address these barriers to youth employment:
-KLCT seeks to promote services that include technical training in key job categories, holistic life skills training, and post-training support for entering the labor market.
-KLCT will encourage programs that will strengthen and extend the duration of job training in targeted growth sectors resulting in more extensive skills development benefits to participants;
-KLCT will solicit linkages with local companies to ensure the relevance of the program's curriculum and create opportunities for mentoring, internships and job placements for the graduates.
-KLCT will ensure the programs' participants will receive a total of 24 weeks of hands-on training focused on preparing them to acquire certification as electricians, welders, automotive mechanics, bookkeepers and plumbers.
-A life skills component will be integrated into the technical training which will cover such topics as work force readiness, community and work, and self-sufficiency.
-Upon graduation, the trainees will register with the job and career counseling offices where they will receive on-going support in finding internship and job opportunities, as well as CV writing, interview preparation and other job-seeking skills."(1)
All these strategies in educating and training must help the ... "youth at risk to move from being unskilled or redundant in one kind of economy to contribute productively to a new economy based on social justice and ecological
sustainability." (2)
1) iynet.org; 2) Dr Eureta Rosenberg