A high volume of young people recruited as part of the Presidential Youth Employment Initiative (PYEI), with specific focus on the Basic Education Employment Initiative (BEEI), were recently capacitated with critical skills envisaged to sustain their personal growth and development in the world of work. The capacitation of the identified youth was facilitated by the Department of Basic Education (DBE), through its Entrepreneurship, Employability and Education known as E3 and financial institutions such as the Banking Association South Africa and the Junior Achievement South Africa. Through this collaboration, the DBE intended to reach out to 1000 youth across all nine provinces and was successful in training 400 young people in Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape Provinces during March 2023. As part of the training workshop, eight provinces were allocated 100 youth each, whilst KwaZulu-Natal was allocated a total of 200 youth, due to its population density. The remaining 600 targeted youth will be trained in the next financial year. 

The PYEI-BEEI National Training Coordinator, Ms Inati Bindiza, said that the DBE E3 Programme team, in partnership with other stakeholders arranged training facilitators for each training centre in the targeted provinces. She stated that the participating youth showed positive reaction to the training sessions since the majority of them were subjected to practical knowledge in entrepreneurship, digital literacy, financial literacy, and artificial intelligence. “As the PYEI-BEEI offers short fixed-term contracts, one of the key components of the initiative is to create pathways for the youth to access other career opportunities. Therefore, the training sessions were considered to enable the youth to acquire entrepreneurial skills needed in the establishment and management of small businesses/cooperatives. The DBE has already engaged relevant stakeholders who will play a crucial role in making these training sessions a success. The DBE, as part of exit pathways, will secure partnerships for mentoring, business opportunities and incubation programmes beyond the PYEI-BEEI,” added Ms Bindiza.

Representatives from Banking Association South Africa and Junior Achievement South Africa said that partnering with the Government in the empowerment of the youth of South Africa was a great privilege to make a difference in communities. They stated that their involvement in this programme will go a long way in ensuring that young people become self-sufficient to endure life adversities in their journey towards the anticipated future prospects.  

Mrs Waheeda Carvello, Head of the Institutionalisation under the DBE-Entrepreneurship, Employability and Education Programme, said that the training sessions have been far-reaching because they covered a wide range of topics including leadership and introduction to business leadership, introduction to the design thinking process, mental wellbeing, project management, financial management, product costing, pricing, break-even point and goal setting for entrepreneurs. “We classified the training into three phases. Phase 1 consists of physical training where the participants are expected to work in groups; Phase 2 consists of continuous online support, which will cover mentoring and additional training on entrepreneurship; and in Phase 3, the participants are expected to pitch business plans to various prospective donors and funders.  The most critical aspects that small businesses must take into consideration is financial literacy and management. The partnership also aims to address the high unemployment rate in our country by proactively resourcing an understaffed field. The skills offered by Junior Achievement South Africa are aligned with the government 's goal to empower the youth with the skill set to build thriving communities,” said Mrs Carvello.