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.