Article on YES a no-no
When my partner, Andrew Levy, and I were interviewed by Lesley Stones we believed she was to write an article profiling our community, Umuzi (No, YES is not a viable solution to sustainable youth employment, April 26). We hoped it would be a positive step towards raising awareness of the small but significant contribution Umuzi is making towards youth employment. We were naive. Stones turned the interview into a controversial take-down of the new Youth Employment Service (YES).
The trouble with the article started with the headline and continued in the first paragraph: “The new YES scheme [sic], designed to create a million paid internships, wastes money by feeding people into low-skilled, dead-end jobs, the founders of the successful Umuzi Academy in Johannesburg argue.”
YES is in the planning phase. Little to no money has been spent on anything. Therefore, it would be illogical for anyone to claim it wastes money or places young people in dead-end jobs. This is where context and nuance are essential. In the interview I remember saying, “There is a danger that YES could fail if it invests only in low-value jobs. Many of these jobs may not exist in five years. At Umuzi, we’ve learned that it is possible to support young people to enter high-value careers, like software development and data science. We believe investing in these sorts of future careers is a better long-term investment for young people, YES and SA.”
It leaves me feeling angry, disappointed and misrepresented that our interview, which focused primarily on the history of Umuzi and the impact of our programme, was published instead as a fuming, illogical and inaccurate rant on YES. My true position on YES is positive and nuanced. I’ve spent the last decade working on youth employment. Naturally, I have opinions about what YES, or any other programme, should focus on. There is a big difference between trying to influence a national campaign — my intention — and dismissing it, as Stones portrays me.
Gilbert Pooley Via e-mail