The summit, Accelerating Inclusive Youth Employment, which was hosted by Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator at the Spier Wine Estate in Cape Town concluded on Tuesday. Here are ten things the summit resolved to help solve SA’s crisis of youth unemployment.

Scale
Scale should be obtained in the growth of business process services. One way to achieve this would be to accelerate and grow foreign direct investment.

Technician training
Enhance training of technicians to work in installation, repair and maintenance jobs. Technician jobs can cut across multiple industries and provide a sound basis for scale.

The entry-level requirements and input costs for training technicians are considerably less and more attainable than that for artisans.

Digital and tech skills
Unlock and accelerate the digital and tech skills pipeline.

Social economy
Enable the youth to find employment pathways in the social economy in order to help them create sustainable livelihoods for themselves.

The social economy is generally defined as being distinct from the private and public sectors. It is usually not-for-profit services or activities offered in communities on a cooperative basis. An example would be teaching people how to access the internet or providing early childhood development.

Geographic distribution
Grow geographically distributed opportunities through real-time demand-led skills development and matching those with needs in the tourism, conservation and agriculture sector.

One-year work
Fund new one-year work opportunities through the Youth Employment Service (YES). YES is a collaborative economic enabler aimed at the youth and led by business in partnership with government and labour.

Pathway manager platform
Strengthen the pathway manager platform to take young people “from learning to earning”. According to Harambee, while many unemployed youths remain locked out of the economy, job vacancies go unfilled every year – even in low-growth economic conditions.

Young people from poorer households incur great costs looking for work and lack the social networks, work-readiness, information and exposure to find available opportunities. Many matriculants and graduates, therefore, fail to make the move from “learning to earning”, despite being sufficiently educated on paper.

A “pathway manager” would understand how to organise a spectrum of opportunities as either destinations or transition points for a young person. In this way a pathway manager can match and direct young people on their job journeys.

Innovative financing solutions
Innovative financing solutions should be developed to accelerate demand-focused skills development and “learning to earning” transitions for inclusive youth employment creation.

Reducing costs for work seekers
Interventions are needed to reduce costs for work-seekers. This can be done through interventions to provide increased connectivity solutions, transport solutions, addressing proximity challenges and providing access to in-community open learning opportunities.

Ongoing collaborative leadership
Ongoing collaborative leadership is essential to grow evidence and insights about inclusive employment creation for the youth that can sustain momentum and inform policy, planning solutions and lead to design and implementation at scale.

Click here to access the full article published on Fin24. https://www.fin24.com/Economy/10-steps-to-get-young-people-working-20181028