Almost R1-billion has become available for disbursement from next year
Thabo Mohlala
The R855-million generated from the proceeds of the demutualisation of insurance giants Old Mutual and Sanlam to fund youth development programmes will be disbursed from early next year.
The Umsobomvu Youth Fund’s office opened its doors for business last week, following a lengthy process of putting in place a board of directors, appointment of senior management, conception of programmes and the development of a business plan.
During that period the allocated funds have generated interest and have shot up to a whopping R960-million.
Malose Kekana, the fund’s CEO, is cautious when he talks about challenges facing the new organisation.
“The last thing we want to create is unfair expectations. There are crucial questions we need to address. How do young people get jobs when the economy is not growing? Self-employment appears to [be the] solution. There are six-million unemployed people in South Africa. If each programme trains 100 000 people each year [then] there will be 100000 new job entrants.”
Umsobomvu is careful not to duplicate existing programmes, and says that sufficient consultation has been done with a broad spectrum of youth organisations, political parties and church groups.
“The fund will not reinvent the wheel. We will look at services already available and, provided they fit in with our focus, we will work with these organisations, whether it be a call centre or skills development programme”, says Anaseh Tabrizi, the fund’s chief operating officer.
Three broad programmes constitute the bulk of the fund’s focus.
The establishment of a Youth Information Service to serve as a databank to provide information on skills development, career guidance, entrepreneurship through existing community facilities such as advice centres, Internet and call centres that are mushrooming throughout the country.
A skills development and transfer programme that includes community service. Here youths will be involved and trained in bulk infrastructure development projects such as housing, roads, sewage and storm drainage. The aim of this programme is to enable youths to acquire skills they could use to establish careers and better their employment prospects. Such exposure would be accredited.
A youth entrepreneurship programme to fund young entrepreneurs building a pool of small and medium entrepreneurs by imparting business skills and organising mentoring systems. This programme seeks to introduce young people into the mainstream economy.
Tabrizi is upbeat about the entrepreneurship programme.
“We expect that the greatest source of employment will be in the areas of social development and in the creation of small- to medium-size enterprises [that’s] where most employment can take place.”
In addition the fund has also identified six areas in which skills transfer has to be intensified. These are accounting, agriculture, information technology and communication, engineering, commerce (banking and insurance) as well as sports and entertainment.
Kekana says the six areas could yield a “critical mass of skilled cadres who will contribute immensely to the country’s human-resource capital and also help attract foreign investment.
“The idea is to provide skills development, job shadowing and mentoring with established companies so that youths are exposed to real work environment,” he says.
Kekana says in order to maximise their operations they have developed “internal capacity for evaluation and monitoring” that will give them early warning signs to whether they are on track. He urges that their projects should be measured in terms of “impact and not necessarily on how many projects they have disbursed”, and the fund will use non-governmental and community-based organisations to implement its programmes.
Asked about the greatest challenges that the fund is likely to confront, Kekana says the “lack of history of formal engagement of the private sector” in developmental projects. He says companies seldom volunteer to provide opportunities, let alone train young people to gain skills.
He says “lack of consensus with regard to policy could pose its own difficulties, if, for instance, we engage youths to clean a certain part of the city or township, the Department of Labour should not see this as an exploitation of young people, but as training, albeit for a short duration”.
Kekana says the dissemination of information about the fund is important, so that young people outside the metropolitan areas can also benefit from its programmes, and for people to understand that Umsobomvu does not offer bursaries and loans nor does it provide jobs, but rather opportunities.
The fund says that only 5% of youth use career guidance services and 62% of the youth in South Africa are unemployed and desperately need career guidance. Umsobomvu targets youth whose ages range from eight to 35. Kekana emphasises the fund’s bias towards gender balance and people with disabilities.