The Youth Employment Service (YES) will offer jobless South Africans opportunities to get work experience and secure future employment through internships.
The Youth Employment Service (YES) will help South Africans from the ages 18 to 35 years gain access to meaningful work experience. The initiative was created to help nurture employable youth and combat the high unemployment rate in South Africa.
The initiative was launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday the 27th of March 2018. Already over 100 companies have signed up to host the initiative. The initiative has been a partnership between government, civil society, business and labour.
The YES initiative aims to see more than one million young South Africans offered paid work experience over the next three years.
Director at Goldman Sachs Sub Sahara, Colin Coleman explained to Kieno Kammies how the initiative would work and what the youth can look forward to after they have completed their year’s work experience.
“At the end, they will get an accredited certificate that they have participated and by doing that, through this one year experience, they become much more employable in the job market.” – Colin Coleman, Director at Goldman Sachs Sub Sahara
“What we are trying to do is to put underutilised talents into organisations and they become much more productive.”
“I am quite confident that among the 5.9 million unemployed youth in South Africa there is a raw talent that will rise to the surface, that businesses will go out and find.”
“The national champions will go out there and recruit anything between 3 000 and 4 000 unemployed youths into their organisations which is a huge organisational effort.”
This initiative has a promising future and will definitely change the lives of unemployed youth. What are your thoughts?
Youth can sign up here and companies can get involved here.
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