Project to train rural youth may be working
The National Rural Youth Service Corps is set for a relaunch next year, writes Karl Gernetzky
AFLAGSHIP programme aimed at providing skills training for rural youth appears to be making a dent in unemployment and has offered some insight into the effort needed to create enduring opportunities for school-leavers.
Despite being delayed and an initial whiff of controversy, the National Rural Youth Service Corps is set for a relaunch next year. The initiative comes at a time debate is raging about youth wage subsidies and job-seeker grants to support young people.
The programme demonstrates that while support for the youth can have a positive effect, a major investment in support structures is necessary — and this need not always be financial.
The R900m National Rural Youth Service Corps was launched in September 2010 with the aim of training 7,000 youngsters to provide community development projects in their own communities, but the programme got off to a shaky start. Eyebrows were raised in 2011 when thousands of young people underwent training at military bases, while complaints were made by some participants that they were being “left in limbo” without promised work placement.
In the initial two-year programme, participants first undergo household profiling, four months of character building, including “discipline”, and skills training in areas such as construction, disaster management and even office work.
This is followed by placement in community projects requiring these skills, says programme manager Anton van Staden.
Participants receive a stipend of R1,320 a month.
The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform has described the project as successful. Delivering his budget speech last year, minister Gugile Nkwinti announced that the project would be boosted by a further R190m from the Treasury. The target cohort would be expanded to 15,000 youths by the end of the financial year as the department sought to unlock economic and educational opportunities in rural areas.
But David Neves, a poverty researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, warns that youth in rural areas face much the same challenges as those in urban areas: acquiring skills and getting workplace training. Added to this, there has been a comparatively slow rate of urbanisation since 1994, something that “comes as a surprise” to social scientists who had expected a postapartheid “deluge” of urbanisation. This unlikely outcome was ascribed to a relatively generous grant system and the government’s roll-out of infrastructure in rural areas.
Mr Neves says it is important not to view urban and rural areas as sharp “dichotomies” because they are linked by highly dynamic migration, with many of the “developmental challenges of rural areas echoed in urban areas”.
Mr van Staden agrees that some of the concerns over access to op- portunities in the programme were valid. Workplace training was one of the reasons the programme was extended for two years. A further problem arose through the unexpected intense oversight the youth required before they were capable of engaging in projects or identifying and starting new ones.
Mr van Staden says “skills training was never a problem”, and while there may be an issue in identifying projects, the ultimate aim of the programme — which is to create a connected youth sector capable of identifying new opportunities — had been demonstrated. He says the focus is on the current cohort and it will be “four to six months” before firm plans are made for another group to start in September next year. But the project would be tweaked and rolled out to ensure that workplace training opportunities are available.
With huge government infrastructure spending looming, some people have suggested a need and opportunity to expand the corps to 50,000. However, a far more comfortable number would be 15,000, says Mr van Staden.