June has become a difficult month for South Africans to grapple with. It is supposed to be a time when we honour and commemorate the class of ‘76 who found the courage to stand up for their rights to an equal, accessible, and excellent education. However, the current strained economic environment is making it harder for young people to survive, let alone thrive.

The country’s unemployment rate for those under 35 years old is a staggering 56%. In actual numbers, 4.8 million young people are looking for jobs, and a further 2.4 million have lost hope (the so-called ‘discouraged work seekers’). 

Even in these tough economic circumstances, the Youth Employment Service (YES) and its corporate heroes have created more than 113,500+ game-changing jobs for youth in just four years.

This Youth Day, we’re choosing to celebrate young people’s immense potential and determination, despite the soaring youth unemployment rate. We’re celebrating our game-changing YES Youth and their ability to shape the world and overcome challenges. From entrepreneurs to corporate professionals, skilled drone pilots, and insightful data analysts, these YES Youth are changing the game for their families, companies, communities, and our country.

YES is a national movement of 1,400 leading businesses nurturing young talent and providing opportunities by creating an army of game changers – the skilled professionals, leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs of tomorrow. These are the people who will be the future of the country.

YES fuels youth potential and sustainable businesses

YES works with the private sector to tackle South Africa’s persistent youth unemployment challenge by enabling, through powerful partnerships with the private sector, 12-month work experiences for the youth.

These jobs, which are 100% funded by the private sector, give the youth the necessary skills and professional exposure they need for future employment opportunities. In the process, YES has seen more than R6 billion in youth salaries injected into local economies across the country.

Since its inception, YES has worked with more than 1,400 businesses of all sizes. They include corporate heavyweights like Nedbank, Anglo American Platinum, The Foschini Group, Bidvest Protea Coin, BMW, Volkswagen South Africa, YUM! Pizza Hut, Investec, Toyota, Motus, SPAR group, Nestle, Mercedes-Benz, Multichoice and Ford.

By sponsoring youth jobs, these companies gain up to two levels up on their broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBEE) scorecards, while integrating into their environmental, social, and/or governance (ESG) and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) strategies and reporting.

YES also offers a turnkey solution for businesses who want to create work opportunities and improve their B-BBEE scores and/or enhance the ESG/SDG strategies, but are unable to provide relevant work or space within their organisation. In such cases, YES’s implementation partners (IPs) will recruit, contract, and manage the youth on behalf of the business for the full year of work, including training and hosting costs.

YES works with 25 IPs who are generally NPOs and small businesses working in high-impact sectors where they live, which means youth do not have to travel far for work and they can play an important part in building their own communities.

These high-impact sectors include conservation, healthcare, education, digital, early childhood development and more. Historically, the focus of the YES turnkey solution has been to help capacitate under-resourced sectors in communities. We are now expanding the model to include future-facing sectors that have the capacity for high absorption, such as agri, global business services (GBS), tech and digital, and more.

Creating sustainability for country, company and community through youth jobs.

If 2 in 3 young people are locked out of the economy, what does that mean for the future of business, communities and our county at large?

That’s 7.2 million young people who do not have purchasing power and maybe, never will. It is vital that we act now and employ youth as our first line of defence against a very dark future reality and social instability.

Training, developing and employing youth in relevant, 21st century skills and technology that will future-proof career paths is vital to the sustainability of our country and economy.

The YES programme is all about creating sustainable livelihoods for youth, and in turn, encouraging our youth to create sustainability for their families, communities, environment and country post-programme.

Enhancing social mobility

62% of YES Youth have financial dependents and 53% come from grant-recipient households, meaning the YES salary paid by our corporate heroes does not just benefit the individual, but ripples through families and even communities.

Kgomotso Sekhu thought that she had made it. A young woman from a remote rural village, she had overcome massive adversity to get a degree in mathematics from the University of Pretoria. But cruelly, landing a job still seemed beyond her grasp.

Her quest for employment was hindered by numerous obstacles. Like millions of young jobseekers, she had no money for data or transport. She would use a local school’s Wi-Fi to send her documents and check for job posts.

Then she discovered YES, and her life changed forever. In 2019, she started a 12-month work experience as a data management trainee at Nedbank. With the help of YES and Nedbank, she honed her skills, fostered her talent, and rose through the ranks. Today, she’s a business intelligence data analyst in Nedbank’s Wealth Division.

Enabling multipliers – where one job creates ten more

The path to entrepreneurship is often paved with courage and initiative. 15% of YES Youth are engaged in entrepreneurial activity, which is double the national average of 7%. Thobani May turned a pressing environmental issue in his community into an environmentally friendly business opportunity.

Concerned about the abundance of invasive wattle trees in his area, he saw an opportunity to use these alien trees to create Eco Char, an environmentally conscious business that produces charcoal. Eco Char not only helps restore the community’s land but also generates income, providing a practical solution to an environmental issue while contributing to the local economy.

What began as a small operation using recycled oil drums has evolved into a business using kilns that produce 20 times more charcoal. Each year, the business has experienced consistent growth, a testament to the alum’s commitment and entrepreneurial spirit. Thobani now employs five people.

Turning side hustle into start-up

YES Alumnus Sabelo Thabethe graduated from the ZIAO Coding Bootcamp through the programme, which kicked off a journey that led him to becoming a tech entrepreneur.

Harnessing his newly gained technical expertise and entrepreneurial skills, he collaborated with friends to establish his own fintech startup, Zaka Manager, which demystifies personal finance by offering insights into spending and transactional behaviour.

“We aim to tackle the issue of limited financial literacy, and low understanding regarding personal spending habits, by analysing transactions and providing valuable insights to users,” says Thabethe.

Join the movement

By investing in these youth jobs, your company can create a triple impact:

1. Job creation for youth.
2. Money injected into communities through youth salaries.
3. Broad-based change through hitting your ESG/SDG targets (whatever they may be).

Take the first step and change South Africa’s trajectory. Through inter-sectoral collaboration, we can build back better. Join over 1,400 companies signed on to YES and making difference.