Young people who do not have environmental knowledge and exposure often struggle to understand the concepts and processes that form the basis of environmental education.
The Youth Environmental Service (YES) programme run by Delta Environmental Centre in Johannesburg aims to tackle this situation by mentoring young people and encouraging them to become change agents in their communities.
Delta is a non-profit company that has won a Greening the Future Award in the past for its environmental education programmes.
Its new YES project, started in January 2013, exposes up to 100 young applicants a year to a variety of environmental issues that include biodiversity and waste, relevant environmental policies and local community concerns.
Participants study a short course accredited by the education, training and development practices sector.
They are then assisted in finding employment in the formal job sector, or become entrepreneurs within the green economy, or further their studies at colleges and universities.
"YES enhances their professional development and helps them to understand the environmental challenges they face in their local communities. Participants start personal growth plans, analysing themselves as individuals and projecting where they see themselves in one year's time," says Delta's executive officer, Di Beeton.
Funded by the department of environmental affairs' social responsibility programme, the training takes place in the North West. Participants break into groups to conduct environmental community service at two project sites.
In response to poor nutrition in schools and problems of food security in general, the YES leaders help to create food gardens, and to design and establish medicinal or herb gardens.
They also conduct clean-up campaigns, hold community indabas as an awareness-raising activity, and propagate spekboom plants to encourage greening of the environment and carbon sequestration.
"The YES project is addressing critical and environmentally relevant issues in rural areas of the country in an interactive and socially responsible manner while offering the beneficiaries meaningful exit opportunities," says Beeton.