Conference challenges youth to Go Beyond to reach success

The Western Cape Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, through its YearBeyond programme, hosted a GoBeyond conference aimed at supporting youth to go beyond their fears and shape their future from 16-18 July 2022.

The YearBeyond programme is a youth in service programme which offers unemployed youth the opportunities to get in-service training while also giving back to their communities. The conference, hosted at the University of the Western Cape, was attended by 700 youth who are part of the YearBeyond programme (called “Yeboneers”) and brought three days of exciting guest speakers and over 36 different activities for them to engage in.

Keynote speakers included Khanyi Mlambo, Delecia Davids and Ruda Landman, who all delivered messages encouraging the participants to move past their fears and to imagine different futures for themselves.

Activities ranged from sessions on building your professional brand, emotional wellbeing and intelligence and agency. There were also fringe events, which offered fun activities like improving tech skills, a silent disco, a quiz and musical bingo.

Many of the participants have never travelled to Cape Town or been on a university campus and this conference offered them this first step to re-imagining their futures.

The conference ended off with three Mandela Day activations – a campus clean-up, a song writing competition to call youth in communities to action and a writing workshop to encourage young people to follow in Madiba’s footsteps and become today’s heroes doing what they can with that they have in their communities.

Minister Anroux Marais said: “These young people are already role-models in their communities as they are imaging new futures and changing lives every day. They are the leaders of tomorrow and we are happy that we are able to give them these stepping stones on their path to success.”

The YearBeyond programme will continue to run various programmes in the Western Cape to provide opportunities to youth in the province.