Courses to empower the youth
DIGITAL training initiative Digify Africa regularly holds workshops that aim to empower the youth with information technology knowledge.
Sherry Dzinoreva, Digify Africa programme director, chats to Job Market about how the youth could benefit.
QUESTION: How are the youth who participated in the Digify workshop selected?
ANSWER: Digify Africa is made up of two programmes – Digify Pro and Digify Bytes.
Digify Pro is a three-month boot camp where we accept 20 young people who have demonstrated a deep passion for digital marketing but have not had a chance within the industry.
At the end of the programme we help place them into a full-time job.
Digify Bytes is a one-day, or sometimes two-day digital skills course that we offer to a wide range of people. This programme is designed to introduce the fundamentals of digital marketing to anyone who is interested. There isn’t an acceptance criteria per se. Q: Where are the youth from? A: Participants are from all over Johannesburg. We also offer both programmes in Cape Town.
Q: Which skills are they taught?
A: During all of our Digify Bytes courses, we start with an introduction to digital marketing, followed by content marketing, SEO (search engine optimisation), social media, Adwords (which is most beneficial for those who want to understand how to advertise online) and more. Q: How many trainers are there? A: Normally our Digify Bytes sessions are run by one trainer. However, larger sessions sometimes have up to six trainers.
Q: Who is funding the workshop and how much will it cost to run?
A: Digify Bytes is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, British Council and Google. Because it is funded, we offer our courses for free to organisations who would like to partner with us as well as to participants who want to take the course.
Q: How will the performance of trainees be monitored in future?
A: We hope to continue to engage with our trainees after their participation in Digify Bytes. We have a number of short courses that one can take on our website
We will be building additional resources that our trainees can take advantage of over the next few months.
We also heavily encourage Digify Bytes trainees to sign up for Digify Pro if they want to take their learning further.