Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator
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South Africans from the most marginalised backgrounds rarely get the chance to come into contact with potential employers. This is for multiple reasons: the social and geographic legacy of apartheid, the poor quality of schooling, high cost of transport, limited skills and experience. Experience is the determining factor in how likely a person is to gain formal employment, locking out millions of youth caught in the vicious cycle of not having experience and not being able to access it.
Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator helps thousands of young South Africans to get and keep their first job, in a way that simultaneously addresses the needs of employers and employees. Through extensive consultation with employers around their recruitment needs and challenges faced in hiring young people, Harambee has structured a rigorous bridging programme that directly addresses the needs of employers.
Tabea Nong, a single mother from Diepkloof Johannesburg, is a university graduate with an honours degree but has battled to find a full-time permanent job. “Harambee changed my life by giving me the opportunity to get employment, to be able to give my son a better life. The bridging experience introduced to me concepts that I was aware of but had not yet internalised, like maintaining a positive attitude, being disciplined and effective communication skills."
Harambee recruits South African work-seekers between the ages of 18 and 28 from marginalised communities, who have not had permanent employment for twelve months and have been searching for work for at least six months.
Whilst Harambee’s criteria for sourcing candidates is driven by its social impact objective, its selection of candidates from this pool, to be placed.
Shanduka Black Umbrellas
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Shanduka Black Umbrellas (SBU) is an innovative programme supported by the Jobs Fund that seeks to address low levels of entrepreneurship and high failure rates among black start-up businesses. SBU's fundamental purpose is to collaborate with partners in the private sector, government and civil society to address the low levels of entrepreneurship and high failure rate of 100% black-owned emerging businesses in South Africa.
The SBU incubator model provides a structured programme where beneficiaries are afforded professional services, including skills development, mentoring, access to markets and office infrastructure at a subsided rate, over a three-year period. This programme of interventions assists the entrepreneur to building a solid foundation for establishing and maintaining sustainable businesses.
Part of the Shanduka Black Umbrellas incubation programme, Thulare AB Kgafela, known as AB, is a young and vibrant filmmaker. He started out as a production and camera assistant in 2004. He became involved in scriptwriting, production planning, directing to editing and camera operating. The combined skills gave AB the upper hand in the industry. The South African film industry is growing steadily with international investors looking at the country with great interest.
“I started T-Tree media in 2012 while I was still under my previous employer, I had realised that I had hit the ceiling in what I was offering my employer and I was ready to face the real world of entrepreneurship”, said AB.
Cape Craft Design Institute
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The Cape Craft Design Institute (CCDI) is a sector development agency in the Western Cape, mandated to support the development and sustainability of the crafts sector in the province. CCDI tailors support to companies based on a consultation process, in which companies are asked to elaborate on their needs and priorities. CCDI then suggests courses from three groups of support:
- Strengthening the business, for example, training on pricing, financial management and sales techniques.
- Facilitating market access, for example, match-making with buyers and publishing catalogues.
- Product support, which involves testing different production processes with support from trainers and mentors.
- Prior to Jobs Fund funding, CCDI was not involved in providing financial support to beneficiaries and this need was not apparent in its target market. However, CCDI believes that there are instances where financial
and/or bridged, is demand led. Harambee offers employers the option of tapping into all or parts of the value chain. Harambee’s application for funding to the Jobs Fund in 2011 was in the Support for Work-Seekers Funding Window, which seeks to link active work-seekers, especially the youth, to formal sector opportunities and job placement.