YearBeyond equips youth to become economically active

As part of the Western Cape’s drive to boost the local economy and jobs sectors, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport, through its YearBeyond Programme, has been working to equip young people with the necessary skills and opportunities to access jobs.

The YearBeyond Programme provides 18 to 25 year old youth with meaningful work experience, professional development and connections to the economy. It is one of the Western Cape Government’s flagship programmes to address the staggering 61.9% youth unemployment.

Last week saw 60 new Yeboneers start an induction week which will lead them into three months of training on work readiness skills, generic PC skills, transferable data skills and confidence building office skills. The programme, delivered in partnership with CapaCiti, is providing 62 unemployed youth aged between 18 and 25 with basic data administration, data labelling and data capture skills and at the same time exposure to a personal and professional development programme and valuable first work experience. At the end of the 3 months candidates are placed in an 8 month work experience and quarterly skills refreshers. The combination of these experiences ensures all are ready to enter the world of work at the end of the experience.

The almost 400 youth currently on the YearBeyond Primary School programme have worked as teacher assistants, literacy and numeracy tutors and “at home” learning activators this year. While gaining this experience the youth are mentored to discover their superpowers and talents, find a career and develop core work readiness competencies such as communication, teamwork, project management and administration skills. In the process of building these competencies, youth expand their social and economic networks and receive pathway support into studies or employment. 

For this cohort their service has culminated in 2 days of progression training -  learning how to write a winning CV and conducting yourself in an interview in October and then a marketplace of 30 opportunity providers at UCT Graduate School of Business on 13 November.  The market place was a huge success and provided something for everyone. 

Many of the cohort opt to remain in education and four lucky candidates have been selected by NGO Numeric to receive full bursaries to study education and become Maths teachers. While studying they will work as tutors supporting grade 7 learners in no fee schools. This is just one example of the market place’s impact on the youth. 

This kind of pathway success is not a once off. A 3-year alumni study (2015 – 2018) found most alumni secured their next opportunity within 2.8 months of exiting the programme, 81% were economically active, 47% worked full time and 52% were studying part of full time. 19% had secured a higher-level qualification within 3 years. And as these young leaders enter the marketplace around half of them continue to be active citizens volunteering in their communities. 

Minister Anroux Marais stressed the importance of enabling youth to be able to access opportunities to become contributors to the economy. “Many young people cannot afford or do not qualify for higher education and then become frustrated and bored and turn to social ills. We are trying to prevent this by offering our youth the opportunity to build up some all important work experience, hone their job seeking skills and also give something back at the same time by volunteering in their communities. In this way, we create opportunities for them to start their career paths and we also contribute to the recovery of our economy.