Soil of Africa Civic Movement has partnered with various stakeholders to offer skills development learnerships to unemployed youth in and around Tshwane.
According to Soil of Africa Regional Convener Joseph Maake, the organisation has its own internal departments like labour, housing, abuse and youth development.
“Today we are here at Lusaka with more than 200 unemployed youths who are going to be enrolled in our skills development learnership initiative called Business Management and Sales Learnership which is going to change the lives of the youths because most of them are unemployed but with the skills that they are going to acquire here they will be able to open their own businesses or use the certificates that they will get here to access job opportunities,” said Maake.
“The duration of this Business Management and Sales course is six months and it entails both theory and practicals, and the good part is that there is a stipend of R2000 that they will earn every month by virtue of being part of this learnership initiative and when they start doing practicals they will earn extra money via commission,” explained Maake.
He said the intake of those who will be enrolled into the skills development learnership programme started at Shomishanang Primary School in Mamelodi East and that the intake process at Lusaka was the third one of its kind and that the second intake process was in Hammanskraal where more or less 200 unemployed youth were enrolled into the initiative.
Maake said other intake processes will take place at Odi Stadium in Mabopane on the 3rd of June 2025 and thereafter the intake process will move to Soshanguve and Ga-Rankuwa because they want to uplift the youths of Tshwane since the youth unemployment rate is very high in this region as is the case countrywide.
“We have partnered with various stakeholders to fight this unemployment disease and though we know that we won’t be able to completely eradicate unemployment but we can at least reduce it,” he said.
During the practicals stage of this initiative, participants will be taken to various companies to get first hand experience on how businesses are managed while in the process earning some extra cash,” he said.
Meanwhile, CEO of RBAS Development Angel Phetla told Tshwane Talks that they are appealing for assistance from individuals and local businesses in Mamelodi to help them refurbish the classrooms that they use for their skills development programme at Pheladi Nakeni Primary School in Mamelodi West.
She said the principal of the school has given them six classrooms that they can use for their initiative, but unfortunately the said classrooms have been vandalised and can’t be used.
RBAS specialises in skills development initiatives for the youth of Mamelodi in the spheres of plumbing, electrical engineering, bricklaying, welding, Early Childhood Development, Entrepreneurship and IT.
“We couldn’t get funding from SETA because upon inspection they found out that our premises don’t comply with the health and safety regulations and can therefore not be utilised as a learning platform,” she said.
Phetla revealed that the Pheladi Nakeni school premises have actually been vandalised by Nyaope addicts, who are the self-same people that their programme wishes to help,” she said.
“What we do is that we help the addicts to get into rehab and once they have completed their rehab period we bring them into the skills development classroom and after completion of the skills development programme we place them for employment opportunities or maybe help them register their own businesses so that they can become entrepreneurs in their own right,” said Phetla.
Phetla elaborated that there is no electricity at the school; that there is no working toilets, ceilings had been stolen and that they had to get plumbing services to fix the situation; that there was no proper flow of water in the toilets; that they had to embark in a clean-up campaign of the premises together with those participating in the skills development programme and that in terms of health and safety standards there is no way they can have participants learning in a place like that,” explained Phetla.
“The classes had lots of rubble and we cleaned them up and we also managed to get security guards in the form of local elderly guys who are unemployed,” she said.
She pointed out that since enlisting the services of the said security guys who atte not actually paid but are volunteering and accept whatever amount of money they can give them, acts of vandalism at the school have stopped.
“As soon as we get the tickets, ceilings and classrooms in good condition then we will get funding from SETA and continue smoothly with the important task of imparting skills to the youth of Mamelodi,” she said.
“I’m so happy to be part of the skill programme by Soil of Africa and I will do my best and learn,” said Refilwe Nkosi.
“I’m grabbing this opportunity with both hands and I’m happy and all thanks to Soil of Africa for this,” said Jackson Tshabalala.