Cape Town - Efforts to prepare unemployed youth for employment opportunities in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) were made possible this Youth Month with 80 learners graduating from local non-profit organisation (NPO) Abaguquli’s 4IR Training programme this week.
Forty young people from Elsies River and 40 from Gqeberha were granted the opportunity to upskill themselves with the necessary skills required to succeed and generate an income in the 4IR.
Abaguquli Founder Aasiyah Adams said the NPO wanted to reach out to marginalized individuals in areas where unemployment and poverty was high.
“Whilst the local economy doesn’t currently have the capacity to absorb unemployed youth en masse, this era of tech innovation and global economic growth, is a means for youth to unlock market opportunities beyond their geographic location to generate an income,” said Adams.
The founder said the NPO was currently working on building mobile labs, fully equipped with state of the art technology, drone simulators and a humanoid, where learners could explore coding,artificial intelligence, data analysis, robotics and other 4IR skills.
“The objective is to drive the trucks to remote rural areas to create awareness and run mini workshops to educate young minds about future skills, '' said Adams.
Adams said partnership was key to what they do and in this instance, they partnered with a local training and education organisation in Elsies River to identify unemployed youth from the community that would be interested in the programme.
Graduand Ashleigh Esterhuizen said she felt the 4IR Training Programme was industry-opening in its approach to set them up for doing their own business, with their own e-commerce sites, registered on freelancing platforms and trained on how to market their services through digital marketing platforms.
“Learning about website building was the highlight of the course for me. I feel prepared to go into the world and start building websites and logos for my own clients,” said Esterhuizen.
Students from the Elsies River group are set to graduate from the 4IR Training Program on June 18 and the Gqeberha group on June 25.
“Students that complemented our videography and Drone license training will be filming this graduation and are now generating income by producing movies,” said Adams.