Yes urges youth to come forward for various courses
The Youth Employment Services (Yes) has a wide range of training programmes for the youth of Alexandra at its Alexandra Netcare Ulusha Hub at the Alex Mall.
Don’t despair if you are a despondent youth loitering in the township’s streets not knowing what to do.
If you have just completed matric and are not sure what you want to do next or study or are taking a gap year, or have the desire to acquire a skill, look no further. There are plenty of opportunities to exploit under the Youth Employment Service (Yes).
According to the Alexandra Netcare Ulusha Hub manager Tholi Cenenda, the Yes programme is the biggest private sector youth employment programme in the country. It uses innovative legislation to incentivise businesses to create critical jobs for the youth.
Companies need a certain level scorecard of their B-BBEE involvement when they seek procurement work with the government and their involvement in the programme enables them to score those points and become B-BBEE compliant.
“This gave birth to the Yes programme which, among other activities, seeks to give what is called ‘quality work experience’ in answer to the growing frustration of the youth over demands for the experience each time they knock on potential employers’ doors.
“Quality work experience is a programme that is fully funded by the private sector and a particular company approaches Yes and offers to fully fund a certain number of young people [between the ages of 18 and 35] for year-long employment.
“The idea behind this is for the youth to be ultimately absorbed as permanent employees of the company after the year-long work experience but if that is not possible, then the youth will have obtained the necessary quality work experience to enable them to compete for available jobs,” Cenenda said in an interview with Alex News.
Besides the quality work experience programme, Cenenda said the hub was also involved in various training programmes for the youth, one of which is a ceramics-making project run by an entrepreneur who owns a ceramics business.
They have a Youth Content Collective (YCC) that seeks to create opportunities for the youth in the creative industry. Youth4Tourism, a tourism programme co-founded by Sanlam, with funders such as Mercedes-Benz, Hollard, Fairtree, Pizza Hut and more, works with YCC to create jobs while boosting the tourism industry.
A current culinary training kitchen at the hub will soon be turned into a shared space for chefs of varying signature foods for gigs and online orders under the Uber Eats project.
Another new Yes project in the pipeline, for which the hub is already seeking 80 participants from Region E for training, is a solar panel installation and maintenance programme, run in partnership with the Greater Alexandra Chamber of Commerce from its premises at the Motswedi Centre.
Cenenda said the solar project would include a three-month training programme after which stakeholders in the solar industry would be requested to employ the youth to give them work
experience.
Cenenda said the hub ran one of the biggest drone pilot programmes in the country, as well as a digital skills and AI programme.
“We have also reached an agreement with the National Youth Development Agency to start a Siyazakhela project in which the agency will take occupancy of space where the youth can draft a business plan and also apply for funding under one roof.”
There is also a textiles section where youth can design and sew clothes, along with another section for a resident textile business that is housed for a year to learn the nitty-gritty of running and growing its business.
The hub also runs digital skills training for the elderly to help them keep up with the pace of technology and this has no age restrictions, Cenenda concluded.
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