Shoprite invests in youth development

RETAIL giant Shoprite is looking forward to continuing extending its support to vulnerable young South Africans, by empowering them through employment services, bursaries and skills and training programmes.

Over the past five years, the Shoprite Group said it has spent more than R700 million on substantial retail skills and training programmes to enhance the career options for the country’s unemployed youth.

According to the group, this has been expended on training 24 308 people in Shoprite’s Retail Readiness Programme, which worked to provide 1 027 bursaries and training to 5 765 young people during the last three years as part of its Youth Employment Service (YES) initiative.

A representative for the group said the projects initiated by Shoprite were aimed at training and upskilling youth especially those who had not been previously employed by the Group and are focused on helping unemployed youth gain the skills they need to secure jobs in the retail industry.

One of the group’s most successful projects, which has proven itself as a sustainable programme over the years, is the Retail Readiness Programme, one of the country's largest skills development initiatives.

Participants receive practical skills training in stores and two weeks of theoretical training. This in efforts to better equip the youth with the basic skills to work in a retail environment or start their own business. Successful participants receive NQF-level 3 qualifications.