Joburg Youth Unites Summit

June 24- 26th 2014 saw over 300 young people convene at Constitution Hill in Braamfontein for the Joburg Youth Unites Summit hosted by United Twenty-13 in partnership with Constitution Hill, Graduate Hub, City of Johannesburg and The Nelson Mandela Foundation. The idea behind the 3 day summit was to give feedback on the One Young World summit held in Johannesburg last year. The summit was curated by 8 of the 20 candidates chosen by Mayor Parks Tau to represent The City of Joburg as host city delegates at the summit. JYU focused on issues such as service, leadership, civic duty, education, sustainable development, entrepreneurship and other key areas of socio economic development.

The programme also included night sessions for young people who could not attend during the day because of other commitments, these were dubbed the Ubuntu sessions and featured a Ted- Talk like set up where industry experts such as Akin Omotoso and Melanie Ramjee shared their experiences and how they become ground breakers in their respective fields. 

The summit also took a look at what it means to be a young and living in Jozi, lunch breaks where edgy and youthful with 'make your own Kota', pizza and even a full day of vegetarian meals sponsored by Fry's Family exposing delegates to different lifestyles. plenary sessions were designed to be interactive using various forms of multimedia and even included a game of Amazing Race where attendees had to use clues to navigate various parts of the National Heritage Site allowing them to learn more about struggle stalwarts who were once held on the site and absorb a piece of their city generally frequented by tourists. 

Luvuyo Mandela and Justice Edwin Cameron

Delegates during the Amazing Race session

The final day of the summit featured a Doing Day where attendees spent the day at the No. 3 Kotze Street Shelter giving back and interacting with other young people who live at the halfway house. Attendees were requested to donate clothing, shoes, bags and non- perishable goods which were used to set up a pop- up shop where residents of the shelter had the opportunity to shop around for clothes and shoes of their liking.

BrandSA CEO Miller Matola and OYW ambassador Simamkele Dlakavu 

Election Awareness.

Hi All... YouthLab is doing some really amazing work! We are only days away from Elections and I'm swamped with school work but I had to share this... the below extract is an e-mail I received from the YouthLab team. I hope this will be as useful to you as it was to me. I've added the accompanying link for your convenience.

"Whilst the act of voting is important, perhaps what is equally important is voting from a point where you are well-informed on what a party is promising. The best way to do this is by reading an election manifesto and making a decision based on which manifesto aligns with your views the most. However, manifestos are often long and reading them seems like a mundane task. Youth Lab has made this process easier. We have read the manifestos of 13 different political parties and summarised them into infographics for you to have a look at. In these infographics, we have highlighted what parties had to say regarding 5 issues that we think South Africans are most concerned about:

Education

Crime & Safety

Health

Economic Activity

Land Reform

Below, is a sample of what these infographics 

look like." 

follow the link below for more...

http://www.youthlab.org.za/elections-2014/

Global Youth

Service Day.

11-13 April 2014.

Igniting patriotism. Encouraging civic duty. Promoting collaboration. Building society, one community at a time.

This year was my first time celebrating global youth service day, it is unfortunate that not many young people are aware of international days of service such as this one as it would be amazing to see young people taking part in making their communities a better place. I had a lot of fun with my United 2013 team throughout the weekend and cannot wait to get my   hands dirty again in the service of my community.

11 April – Values: The day was spent at Protea South Park rehabilitating the neglected park and the focus was the principles underpinning service, leadership and civic duty.

12 April- Knowledge:  We worked with the Mabaleng Disability Forum doing a door to door discussion with community members with regard to the clean-up of land to be used for agricultural and recreational purposes for people with disabilities and surrounding communities. It was great engaging with community members and finding out what views they shared and ideas they had about how the piece of land should be utilized.

13 April- Skills:  A visit to the Seymour farm saw us using the day to learn different aspects of the farming process in an attempt to develop abilities and talents to contribute constructively. We were taught about the effort and time spent in farming, from planting to harvesting.

Presidential Youth Indaba

The Presidential Youth Indaba on Jobs and Skills was hosted by the Department of Economic Development from the 28^th Feb – 3^rd March 2014 at the Birchwood Conference Centre, youth from all 9 provinces were invited to attend the event which was the first of its kind.

Topics included panel discussions on the Youth Employment Accord, Internships, Green economy, Rural Development and Youth, Education, Skills and decent work amongst others. The programme featured video clips on the governments national infrastructure plan. Panellists included the likes of Sidumo Dlamini – President of COSATU, Yishen Pillay- Chairperson- NYDA, Minister Ebrahim Patel (Economic Development) and Professor Adam Habib- Vice Chancellor of Wits University.

The Indaba allowed youth to interact with key players in industry through Q&A sessions and to hold government accountable for the unacceptable rate of youth unemployment. The indaba was well co- ordinated and the four day programme was packed with really important issues and ran more or less smoothly with the only hiccup being the registration and check in of guests which was a tedious experience however the staff at the Birchwood Conference Centre were professional and very friendly.

Unfortunately we were treated to a lot of ‘going to’ , ‘planning to’ and ‘thinking about’ by speakers and panellists regarding the work necessary to  change the employment landscape for young South Africans and some may suggest the experience was a frivolous exercise due to the fact that besides 12 month learnership programmes to which one delegate commented “Young people end up being learnership specialists.” And Public employment schemes that Minister Nxesi described as “defensive measures against poverty” and which he exclaimed will be upscaled saying “ We would like to see more permanent part- time work.”- confusing- government showed no evidence of a solid plan that will be implemented to change the current situation the country’s youth find themselves in.

The Indaba was closed off by an address by the President of the Republic, which many young people looked forward to, unfortunately a Q&A session was not included in his portion of the programme.

R

 

oundtable discussion with 

NYDA Chairman Yishen Pillay.

In the last week of October, Young Leaders were invited to a roundtable discussion with the NYDA to discuss the issue of such youth unemployment and brainstorm how we can overcome this huge problem in our country.

Mr Pillay described it as an important platform as it promotes a culture of critical thinking and action orientated youth who are also change agents.

It was a highly informative session and many issues were raised as to the negative media attention the NYDA Chairperson had been receiving, the lack of visibility of the agency with young people and digitization for youth in rural areas amongst others.

 

Social Entrepreneur and TUKS Student Tshepo Seloane had even put together a google docs survey which he circulated using twitter to get the views of other young people who had not had the fortune of receiving an invite to the discussions.

The final point was all about turning dialogue into action, the idea to form a Youth Committee that would work hand- in- hand with the agency and whose focus would be to take such challenges and find practical solutions was well received by Mr. Pillay and to date the NYDA has promised to get the ball rolling in this regard.

[October has been quite a roller coaster month for me…  I'm going to dedicate the next few posts on the happenings of my birthday month and why it’s been one of my favourites…]

First on the list…

One Young World Summit 2013.

I attended the One Young World Summit from the 2^nd - 5^th of October.

For those of you who are awkwardly not in the know this is a summit that hosts young leaders from all around the world where they get together to debate and formulate solutions for the pressing issues the world faces.  I was chosen as part of a delegation of 20 exceptional young minds to represent the City of Johannesburg and Executive Mayor Cllr Mpho Parks Tau, after being shortlisted from over 300 candidates- impressive right? It was the first time the summit was hosted in Africa.

Delegates had the privilege to engage in talks with world leaders and pioneers such as Kofi Annan, Sir Richard Branson, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Sir Bob Geldof, Francois Pienaar and Jamie Oliver.

One of my favourite experiences during the summit was a breakout sessions on Leadership and Governance to Constitution Hill with DA Parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko where delegates shared their thoughts on Africa and its role in the global village and on the last day of the summit we had the amazing honour of meeting mama Winnie Mandela who was kind and warm and truly embodied the grace and strength of an African Leader… an African Woman!

What I valued most from the summit is the change in mindset and hunger to work harder that you cannot help but take with you after being exposed to so many amazing people, I wake up with the desire to be better than I ever was the day before and the thought of being anything less than extraordinary is simply unacceptable- for that I can only be eternally grateful.

M

y team and I are working on an exciting Community Engagement project with two street artists who sell their work outside Hector Pieterson Museum in Soweto.

This year we decided on developing the skills of local street artists by exposing them to a new art form they had no training in- Pottery! Our hope is that the artists can incorporate the new skill into their existing works and pass on their new found knowledge onto others and expand their repertoire. 

We are looking to address MDG's 7 and 8

 

Here are some pics of the artists' (Lesly and Lebo) work at the museum...