Jobs centre brings high hope for youth
YES4Youth provides training, job placements
Lizzy Makitla spent four idle years at home struggling to find work after finishing matric. But the 23-year-old has since become one of the beneficiaries of an initiative aimed at building economic pathways for youth in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg.
The initiative YES4Youth is a business-led collaboration with government and labour to create one million work opportunities for young people. Makitla said after she passed matric she did not have money to further her studies. “Since then it has been a struggle for me to get employment. I am happy that the hub gave me an opportunity to turn my life for the better,” she said.
“It was frustrating to stay at home doing nothing. I have (now) been exposed to many job opportunities as I help the youth register for job placements.” The employment hub in Tembisa hopes to expose communities to technology, new ways of working and also revealing the range of options available to youth to grow and develop economic path ways. President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim officially launched the hub yesterday. Mishack Masipa, 27, owner of Mish Da Chef said the hub has created a lot of opportunities for him.
“I met YES in August and since then my business has grown a lot. I have now employed six people, four of them on a full time basis. I am now able to serve five star dishes to the people of Tembisa at lower prices. “My business has more exposure now as there are many people coming to the hub,” Masipa said. Tourism minister Derek Hanekom said he was impressed with the hub for targeting the country’s critical challenge of unemployment. “They are on the right track, and doing something different. They do not only promise jobs to the youth but they are equipped to migrate into their own businesses,” Hanekom said. The CEO of YES4Youth, Tashmia Ismail-Saville said the employment service is tasked with a mandate of creating jobs for the youth. “We had an idea of creating economic activities where people live,” Ismail-Saville. “We have training facilities for the youth close to where they live. Our system has got more than 5 000 jobs and we understand that we cannot place everyone but we can definitely help some of them to start their own businesses.”