Now when we talk about the jobless crisis in South Africa, very very often and correctly so we spoke. We focus on jobless South Africans, young South Africans who are struggling just to get into the world of work at all, get that one first job or internship or even short term post that would allow them to put on their CV.
I have experience a very interesting article caught my eye and it is a story that has been written about the importance of mentorship, the importance of mentors in helping young people get that all important job and to talk about it, we joined by Sinzelware Tembu, who is a researcher at the Center for Social Development which in Africa, which is based at the University of Johannesburg. But September,
Welcome and thanks very much for your time. You've worked on the story co authored by your colleague Professor Lauren Graham. What made you guys stop looking at mentorship in the first place.
I'm intrigued, Hi, John, thanks so much for having me. Just a correction there, I didn't write the article. It was Professor Lauren Graham and Professor Aria and de Len Nooish.
I thought you have done some of the research on it.
Yes, I am part of the research team.
Yes, that was what I said the study.
Yeah, so what made us, you know, kind of think about how to tackle this use unemployment issue. I think we've spent a number of years trying to understand from the supply side, what, you know, who are these young people, what are the challenges they experience? And from that we learned that they they struggle not only with looking for work and finding work itself, but there are multiple barriers that they experience. Some of that is around living in
income poor households, not having enough social networks. We know about issues like the high cost of work seeking and so there's a real issue about connecting right to livelihood opportunities but also to learning, earning as well as other services that can help unblock these barriers. And so the basic package of support program is a coaching program and it provides one on one tailot support. There is a
holistic assessment that is done. They receive coaching by trained child and youth care workers and in that way we try to understand the young person and give them that tailot support in order to connect them with the relevant localized services available. I could go on. There's another component of the program that focuses on connecting community stakeholders, and so it is an integrated approach to solving for the use unemployment issue.
Yeah, I'd like to get that in a moment, but I want to just share with people this because I mean, this was a substantial pilot program. You worked with seventeen hundred young people, Karten case it in and Western Cape. Was the footprint that you worked on as you unrolled the pilot project. What I'm sure you were learning as you were going and thinking, well, this worked really well, this worked less well, This is scalable, this is harder to do at large scale. I mean, what were the
key learnings out of this? Because as people are listening, I'm sure a lot of people are saying, this sounds good, but can we roll it out at a larger scale? What did you learn about that?
No, that's a very important reflection and one that we're also looking into now. We're currently taking part in a trace of study, so we're tracing young people over a longer period of time and that will allow us to one understand the different profiles of young people. We're very clear that you know unemployed young people are not a homogeneous group. Within that you know, big number, that three point four million of young people who are not in education,
employmental training. There are various subgroups. Some of them have metric, some of them have post metric qualifications, and some of them have dropped out, you know, before finishing the trick. All these young people will require different types of support. I will say though that this this approach by coaching young people and having this very intensive approach to looking at a young person and seeing them holistically, right beyond them just being a job seeker, I think it has
yielded a lot of positive results. We're seeing for this particularly vulnerable group of young people who are neat not in employment, educational training, that they do tend to need a little more support and someone to walk that journey with them, understand them, understand their challenges. You know, the young people when they came into the program, they were apprehensive at first. A lot of them didn't understand, you know,
what is coaching going to do for me? And I think they realized after a few sessions this was the thing they kind of didn't know that they needed, right, having someone to be a listening ear, having someone to guide them having someone who builds on their agency and builds upon where they are now. Right, So a very asset focused, an asset approach to our assisting young people
and providing relevant referrals for them. So I think when we think about scale one, we need to understand the different subsets of young people that we're dealing with and provide tailored support. Some will need more intensive support, some will need shorter term interventions. But I do think for those who are particularly doundle that coaching and having a very intensive in person, you know, very close relationship with the young person yields positive results.
Just finally, and and a brief summary, if you can give us one with some temper, I mean, where do you go next with this? Presumably there are people like ourselves who are reading this and finding it interesting, more research, more pilots, or do you think you're at a stage now where you can say, actually, we have a model, let's see if we can build on that.
So absolutely, I think we've we've done the groundwork, both qualitatively and quantitatively to kind of give us, you know, proof of concept that there's definitely something to work with here. I think the next steps one is completing that trace of study so that we can profile young people and also get a better sense of what are the longer term effects and impact of this program. We are looking as well at how can we institutionalize a basic package
of support approach to supporting young people. So what are the elements within this program that we can scale up
in different forms and using what exists? Right, we have infrastructure, we have different government departments, there are different programs that are rolling out, but it really is for all of us in the youth sector to look at what is working and what is giving us the best results and to make sure that all of our programs are aligned with those program elements that yield the best results.
Thanks so much. I mean, I really recommend people have a read of this. It's on the conversation website. Send zelwere Tambu is a research at the Center for Social Development in Africa based at the University of Johannesburg. But let's do some research of our own. I mean, firstly, have you had a mentorship relationship with someone mented you that you benefited from and you may want to just tell us what are the key elements of that, what
really worked? And secondly, if you either as an organization, or you as a part of an organization, shall I say, or maybe you as an individual, have been involved in mentoring people. Because what I liked about this story is often when we deal with the numbers, we then refer ourselves to other numbers, like the extent to which the economy is growing or not, which sector is growing or not. But this seems to focus on getting people ready to
take opportunities where they exist. So I found it fascinating. I hope you found it interesting, and in particular, if you've got something from your own experience to add another layer to what we've just heard, well, I'd love to get that from you. Oh seven two, seven oh two one seven oh two, it's four o'clock.