DURBAN – The Youth Employment Service (YES) initiative was launched in 2018 in an effort to create 1 million new 12-month job opportunities for young people.
The YES initiative which has already found work opportunities for 4600 youth in 2018 is an initiative between businesses and government with young people. Through YES, businesses will create a 12 month paid position for a youth between the ages of 18 and 35 with a minimum stipend of R3 500.
Tashmia Ismail Saville, the chief of executive of YES, in an interview with SME South Africa discussed the 2019 plans for the YES initiative.
According to the chief executive, their focus at the moment is bringing in more corporate partners to get on board with the initiative. So far a total of 248 companies have come on board the YES initiative.
For 2019, the YES initiative is looking to establish 100 community hubs to add to the first community hub that was launched in 2018. The hubs are a part of the YES SMMES Development Strategy which has three focal points. These focal points include business development, route to market and skills training.
According to Ismail-Saville, they are going to start in townships and areas that have huge potential like Mpumalanga.
Their plans for 2019 also includes creating awareness around the initiative and they are calling on South Africans with resources to become a part of the solution.
The YES initiative will also be looking at collaborating with enterprise development programmes which will change the technological landscape and business practices of small businesses.
YES initiative and LinkedIn
Last year October, LinkedIn joined the YES initiative to tackle unemployment. The partnership between these two entities will include three things: LinkedIn profiles, jobs hub and data insights.
For the LinkedIn profiles YES youth would be able to create their own profile with the assistance from LinkedIn. The jobs hubs would be a centralised hub that created by LinkedIn to connect YES youth to jobs form participating South African companies.