To address youth unemployment, the Motsepe Foundation will host an Information and Opportunities Expo in Johannesburg on Tuesday, 28 June 2022. The upcoming exhibition will launch a multi-stakeholder platform that brings together unemployed youth, private sector organisations and civil society enterprises with a purpose to facilitate more youth into the formal labour market.
The Motsepe Foundation, over the next five years, will build an ecosystem of opportunity targeting one million young people. This ecosystem will leverage the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) initiatives of the private sector, by broadening their interventions towards entrepreneurial support and skills development provisions.
Participating companies in the exhibition includes Naspers, Harambee, Youth Empowerment Service (YES), African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), Rain and Tyme Bank. With more expected to join in the coming weeks, each of these companies will share information around their programmes, such as learnerships, internships, skills development and coaching offerings, as well as mentorship and role modelling initiatives.
The Motsepe Foundation Co-Founder and CEO Dr Precious Moloi-Motsepe noted that: “The Expo will give marginalised, unemployed young people some of the information, tools, and networks they need, and it will link companies to this dynamic group. We must leverage multi-stakeholder initiatives if we are to produce the change we need.”
Youth unemployment has been high in South Africa for many years but worsened further over the Covid-19 period. Approximately 60% of the 2.1 million jobs lost in the first eighteen pandemic months were held by people younger than 35.
The Information and Opportunities Expo, due to its high demand, will include an on-line streaming component to share significant information with all unemployed young people who are interested. Registration to attend online will open on 15 June at www.motsepefoundation.org
