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The personal and social costs of the employment crisis are not gender neutral. Women experience disproportionately worse outcomes than men at every stage. While we celebrate Women’s Month, Harambee continues to shine a spotlight on the gendered dimension of youth employment in South Africa and the specific actions we can take to address this.

Launched at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting by The Prince’s Trust group of charities, the research shows a stark ‘Upskill Struggle’ for many young people who are at the very beginning of their careers.

This August, while we celebrate Women’s Month, Harambee continues to shine a spotlight on the gendered dimension of youth employment in South Africa, and the specific actions we can take to address this.

The South African government recently released the first, draft Country Investment Strategy which seeks to attract and facilitate direct and foreign investment in order to drive economic growth, increase employment, and reduce poverty and inequality.

This Youth Month marked 46 years since the Soweto student uprising of June 16, 1976, where students protested against the forced imposition by the Apartheid government of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at local schools. As we think about that generation of brave young activists, we also have to contend with the new struggle faced by the current generation of young people – the battle against unemployment! A struggle exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic of the last two years.

Launched at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting by The Prince’s Trust group of charities, the research shows a stark ‘Upskill Struggle’ for many young people who are at the very beginning of their careers.

Resilience alone in the face of crisis is not what will get us through. It needs to be coupled with intentional investment and support to address the reality of our country’s youth unemployment crisis.

Conext, the official publication of the Digital Council Africa, interviews Harambee’s Chief Executive Officer, Kasthuri Soni for the June 2022 edition of “In conversation with sector leadership”. Soni shares her advice and learnings on what energises her at work and how to empower others.

The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey results suggest that the number of employed young people has increased for two consecutive quarters. While these numbers are the highest they have been in the past two years, this slight bounce-back is cause for very cautious optimism. Employment remains considerably lower than pre-lockdown.

On 16 June South Africa commemorates the Soweto youth uprising of 1976. Youth Day is a significant event for Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, as it brings to the fore the work we do with young people to combat youth unemployment.

On 16 Jun 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered an update on Presidential initiatives aimed at stimulating youth employment in South Africa. He was delivering the youth day message at a local stadium in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. The Youth Day Commemoration is this year celebrated under the theme “Promoting sustainable livelihood and resilience of young people for a better tomorrow.”

Together with BluLever, Harambee’s education partner on the Skills for Prosperity (S4P) programme, aspiring plumbers are being exposed to the workplace before they embark on a lengthy and intensive training process, to check if a career in plumbing is the right fit for them.

While the youth of 1976 fought for education, the youth of 2022 is fighting to be employed. It’s hard to celebrate this day without looking at the challenges that are currently facing young people. The latest Breaking Barriers report by Harambee, details how to combat this huge crisis facing our youth.

One key sector didn’t only buck the trend of job losses during the pandemic – it actually created jobs, primarily for young people. Kasthuri Soni, CEO Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator and Reshni Singh, CEO BPESA, explain how.

Resilience is a word often misused and overly celebrated. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent overlapping crises have meant many of our society’s most vulnerable have been forced to endure too much over the past few years.

Resilience is a word often misused and overly celebrated. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent overlapping crises have meant many of our society’s most vulnerable have been forced to endure too much over the past few years.

The latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey results suggest that the number of employed young people has increased for two consecutive quarters. While these numbers are the highest they have been in the past two years, this slight bounce-back is cause for very cautious optimism. Employment remains considerably lower than pre-lockdown.

In this youth month issue of Breaking Barriers, we outline three aspects of resilience – resilient incomes, resilient sectors, and enablers of resilience – that could serve as clues to help us bounce back out of these multiple, overlapping crises.

The Watchdog interviews Waseem Carrim, CEO of the National Youth Development Agency, Zengeziwe Msimang, Chief Engagement Officer of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, and Ravi Naidoo, CEO of YES4Youth, on how to address and tackle the high unemployment rate among the youth in South Africa.

South Africa has a record high unemployment rate for job seekers between the ages of 15 to 24. On a positive note, this month’s edition of Public Sector Leaders, takes a look at public-private partnerships that assist in creating job opportunities in South Africa, especially for the youth.

Man in the Van has a conversation with Sherrie Donaldson of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, to find out more about this organisation and the important role that it plays in not only preparing youth for the workplace, but also assisting both job seekers and employers to connect with each other.

Many young South Africans lack the essential “soft” skills to succeed in the workplace, despite having the appropriate training and eagerness to work. But a Leadership Base Camp designed and developed by Harambee education partner, BluLever Education is changing all that.

This year’s Skoll World Forum took place as an all-virtual event from April 6–8, 2022. Harambee’s Sharmi Surianarain participated in the session on reimagining economic systems that work for workers.

Sifiso Buthelezi from Power FM is joined by Zengeziwe Msimang, Chief Engagement Officer at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator to discuss the issue of rising youth unemployment.

The South African economy is shifting rapidly. Despite jobless growth, there are specific opportunities that can be unlocked for millions of young people, through targeted interventions, sector coordination and the recalibration of existing tools.

Kopano Gumbi from Newzroom Africa speaks to Zengeziwe Msimang, Chief Engagement Officer at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator to discuss solutions for youth unemployment.

Carte Blanche interviews Zengeziwe Msimang, Chief Engagement Officer at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator and Merle Mansfield, Director at Zero Dropout Campaign to discuss school drop out rates and rising youth unemployment.

Harambee’s Chief Impact Officer, Sharmi Surianarain, talks to The Africa Report on International Women’s Day about how the personal and social costs of unemployment are not gender-neutral.

Sharmi Surianarain, Chief Impact Officer Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator is interviewed on the Jet Set Breakfast discussing Harambee’s latest Breaking Barriers report and reflecting on youth unemployment in South Africa.

This International Women’s Day, Skills For Prosperity features how SA Youth is promoting youth employment in South Africa while also helping to dispel gender stereotypes, by helping young women pathway into work from which they have been typically excluded.

Harambee’s Chief Impact Officer, Sharmi Surianarain, is featured in the International Women’s Day Voices of Africa podcast, discussing how systems are shifting, and while the future of work is here, we have a very outdated approach to both education and employment, and why it’s important to take a holistic view in order to break barriers for young people.

This research report provides useful insights about the South African labour market, the role for pathway managers such as Harambee and the need for improved data to better support the occupational analysis, transitions and earnings. 

SiMoDiSA TechXit’s chairman, Pieter de Villliers, joins SABC News to chat about the barriers and opportunities that exist in the digital and ICT sector, and how they are working with Harambee and DigiLink to address the skills gap and support inclusive hiring in the sector.

In this issue of Breaking Barriers, we shift our focus from what the data tells us about who is unemployed, to where demand for work is unmet and growing and how to unlock it.

You wake up in the morning and check your emails. The first one reads: “We regret to inform you that your application was unsuccessful.” It’s a refrain South Africans know all too well.

We are delighted to share that upon being selected for the Co Impact Systems Change Grant, we are continuing our partnership with Co Impact to improve the work- and education-seeking of >75% of the 4 million youth in South Africa who leave school over the next 5 years.

With matric results coming out later this month, Harambee’s Chief Engagement Officer, Zengeziwe Msimang spoke to Radio702’s Clement Manyathela about tips, tricks and high-quality advice for young people starting, or continuing their journey into work, regardless of their education status.

Sharmi Surianarain, Chief Impact Officer at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator continues her conversation with with CID Student Ambassador, Jamar Williams, after an appearance at the virtual CID Speaker Series event.

These nonprofit institutions are “system shapers,” embedding innovation inside governments and sectors.

In this CID Harvard Speaker Series session, Harambee and its key research partners share lessons from 10 years of impact and partnership with government, business, and civil society to achieve practical and scalable impact.

The latest Quarterly Labour Force Statistics reminds us just how bad youth unemployment is — and why investments such as the Basic Education Employment Intervention (BEEI) are so valuable for their capacity to create youth employment at speed and scale, enabling over half a million pathways for youth across South Africa.

In this edition of Breaking Barriers we focus on if and how public employment programmes perform at scale; in particular, whether efficiency at scale comes at the cost of inclusion and long-term dividends.

The first cohort of digitally-skilled youth have graduated as part of the digital training and mentoring programme introduced by Cape Town-based incubator DigiLink.

Read more about the partnership between J-PAL and Harambee has developed into a collaborative effort to scale up various labor market interventions in South Africa.

Sharmi Surianarain, CIO at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, reflects on the journey to becoming a national platform, underlining systems change thinking and building for scale in a recent edition of Societal Chats.

Ellen Morta, our Regional Lead for Western Cape spoke to Cape Talk’s Lester Kiewit to dispel the myth and discuss in detail the soft and hard roadblocks that young people face when trying to secure steady work.

British High Commission in South Africa works with local partners to train unemployed youth in technical skills.

The President announced the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention (PYEI) in February 2020. It promises a new approach to the problem of unemployment. Harambee comments in the SA Labour Bulletin.

Since the Department of Basic Education opened applications for the next cohort of school assistants just two weeks ago, over 940,000 young people have applied via the zero-rated recruitment platform called SAYouth.mobi, which forms part of the national Pathway Management Network.

In this episode of the Impact Room, we meet the women leaders charting a new course against unemployment – and delivering results.

Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator’s Rob Urquhart and Sharmi Surianarain discuss the uneven experience of digitalisation and the ability of youth to access its opportunities in this paper published in the SAQA’s The South African National Qualifications Framework (NQF) and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) bulletin.

No single social enterprise can scale operations enough to address the significant, complex, and severe crisis of unemployment and specifically youth unemployment in South Africa. What is needed is systems change, which recognizes and address the complexity of the challenge to go farther and faster together.

Harambee has announced the appointment of Group Finance Director Kasthuri Soni as its next Chief Executive Officer. Soni will assume the role in January 2022 from current CEO Maryana Iskander, who is entering her tenth year at Harambee.

To turn SA’s youth unemployment crisis around, we need to believe in young people’s potential, but also come up with a concrete, inclusive action plan.

To build resilience in young women’s employment, we must help them get resilient jobs. This means focusing employment interventions on growth sectors that already employ large numbers of women and dismantling the barriers that lock women out of other well-paid, secure sectors of the economy.

Watch the Director General of the Department of Public Service and Administration, Yoliswa Makhasi, and the Chief Executive Officer of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, Maryana Iskander, in a live webinar in which they discuss the impact of youth unemployment on young women.

In this edition of Breaking Barriers we are facing into the future of work. The decline in permanent jobs is likely here to stay. We must therefore find new ways for young people to reliably enter and stay within the labour market. 

Insights > Impact is a quarterly digest of the most insightful articles we’re reading. Time is scarce, so we’ve summarised the articles for you and shared our key takeaways – focussing on the pieces we found to be most relevant and actionable.

Our Chief Impact Officer, Sharmi Surianarain, participated in Global Skills Day 2021, a virtual event with 125 speakers from 26 countries covering four tracks of thinking. Her panel on Catalysing Learning@Scale debated how to skill young people for the jobs of the future, while ensuring those jobs exist and the barriers to accessing them have been removed.

Ryan Strategic Advisory says that now is the time for big ideas about how new ways of doing business in CX and BPO can drive positive social change.

Collaboration between industry stakeholders proves it’s ability to unlock jobs.

Plumbing sector leads a new approach to apprenticeships, increasing youth employment and enhancing the sector

Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, Acting Minister in the Presidency wrote in the Sowetan that the unemployment crisis may seem too big to tackle, yet there are things we can do now and going forward to tackle youth unemployment head-on, and to provide young people with the support that they need to participate more fully in the economy.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) is proud to announce a partnership with Global Opportunity Youth Network (GOYN) that aims to give youth increased access to the economy and address youth unemployment at scale.

President Ramaphosa’s focus on pathways is the right approach: it is the trajectory that matters. How high or low is the probability that a person will chart through school to post-school learning to working, no matter their starting socio-economic circumstances? The nation’s overall fortunes and development depend on these probabilities.

South Africa’s youth unemployment has been rising steadily and, according to Stats SA, is now at 46.3%. Under the expanded definition (which includes those discouraged from seeking work) it rests at a shocking 74.7%. Non-profit organisation Harambee is doing its bit to resolve the crisis.

The future of work is here. Can we catch up to it? As we mark Youth Day 2021, a moment to make this change more real for young people has arrived.

On 1 June Stats SA released its Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the first quarter of the year, announcing an official unemployment rate of 32,6%.

In this edition of Breaking Barriers we are facing into the future of work. The decline in permanent jobs is likely here to stay. We must therefore find new ways for young people to reliably enter and stay within the labour market. 

Our chief impact officer, Sharmi Surianarian joined 2019 Laureate in economic sciences, Abhijit Banerjee and former JSE CEO, Nicky Newton-King to discuss the social and environmental impact of work at Africa’s first ever Nobel Prize Dialogue.

DigiLink is driven by an industry-level coalition focused on the mutual interests of all players to increase total investment, translate this into concrete jobs, and fill them with skilled workers.

Insights > Impact is a quarterly digest of the most insightful articles we’re reading. Time is scarce, so we’ve summarised the articles for you and shared our key takeaways – focussing on the pieces we found to be most relevant and actionable.

AECI Much Asphalt partners with Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator to look for solutions to its diverse employment requirements in environments characterised by massive youth unemployment.

Isuzu partners with Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator for high quality, job-ready candidates to enable their Youth Employment Service (YES) Programme.

In conversation with Harambee’s Sharmi Surianarain, the Brenthurst Foundation talks through the development challenges facing Africa and some of the solutions on offer for economic growth and prosperity.

For many social enterprises, partnering with government in some way is an essential strategy for achieving impact, especially when seeking systems-level change. This study focuses on why government partnerships matter for scaled impact.

This learning brief highlights the ways in which Harambee has evolved and the extent to which it has contributed to systems change.

This learning brief provides an overview of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator’s learnings on gender inequality from nine years of work in the South African labour market.

With the mobile phone at the centre of Africa’s digital connectivity, creative entrepreneurs are leveraging technology to build the continent’s digital future.

South Africa, after three consecutive years in a humbling second place, has emerged as the number one global preferred front office CX offshore location.

Why economic growth plans should focus on sector-level solutions.

In partnership with the private sector, national government through the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC), and youth employment accelerator Harambee the BPO sector has seen growth over the past year, with a growing pipeline of interested investors.

A toolkit and case study for growing sectors inclusively.

Stop asking us to follow in the footsteps of private sector unicorns. For us, impact at scale looks very different, write two non-profit CEOs.

“What is necessary is to figure out what is effective, scaling up what works and taking a long and serious look at the interventions that aren’t working,” Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator CEO, Maryana Iskander, told Fin24 this week.

Maryana Iskander, CEO of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, participates in the Sankalp Africa Summit on Our Shared Impact Future.

The impact of COVID-19 on the South African economy is hard to overstate.

Insights > Impact is a monthly digest of the most insightful articles we’re reading. Time is scarce, so we’ve summarised the articles for you and shared our key takeaways – focussing on the pieces we found to be most relevant and actionable.

This study explores the running of the first randomised evaluation of training work-seekers to join and use online professional networking platforms.

This study seeks to build evidence, based on what is already being implemented to address the challenge of what works in fostering better employment outcomes for young people who struggle to navigate labour market pathways.

In the fight for greater gender equality and inclusion, governments, NGOs and other stakeholders are increasingly recognising the power of nudges to change human behaviour. The results are promising.

This study shows that assessing work-seekers’ skills in multiple domains, giving them the assessment results, and helping them to credibly share the results with firms increases their employment and earnings.

Maryana Iskander, CEO of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, shares her perspective around adapting to new ways of work in Episode 3 of Echo Radio’s “Where is the office?”.

As thousands of South Africans return to work from the far reaches of the country and beyond, workplace safety takes the spotlight. Anticipating this need, the Return2Work Initiative has launched a range of punchy and accessible safe back2work videos.

Harambee’s Marzanne Collins believes technology can play a significant part in solving youth unemployment.

At Harambee we are committed to keeping you safe, smart and kind. We’re producing a monthly digest of the most insightful articles on youth employment we’re reading, and have focused on the pieces we found to be most relevant and actionable. Time is scarce, so we’ve summarised the articles for you and shared our key takeaways.

Job creation at scale is best achieved in growth sectors. The digital economy continues to grow despite the current global recession, and we need to find ways to harness the opportunities this presents.

At least 3 million jobs have been lost this year and labour market participation by young adults has dropped a staggering 12 percentage points to just below 16%. If job losses persist, we will have lost a decade’s worth of job growth in only six months.

Take a deep dive into the critical roles to support growth in the digital economy, as well as the size and nature of offshoring of digital demand outside of South Africa.

At Harambee we are committed to keeping you safe, smart and kind. We’re producing a monthly digest of the most insightful articles on youth employment we’re reading, and have focused on the pieces we found to be most relevant and actionable. Time is scarce, so we’ve summarised the articles for you and shared our key takeaways.