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Newly formed National Youth Development Agency rebuilds SA’s youthYouth Day 2009 saw South African President Jacob Zuma launch the country’s National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) during his State of the Nation address. The launch formed part of a series of National Youth Month events championed by the Presidency, of which the 16 June announcement formed a core component.
The creation of the new NYDA represents the new administration’s merger of the National Youth Commission and Umsobomvu Youth Fund, in what the recently established agency describes as its commitment to advance youth development. The coalescing of the two groupings into one agency is reportedly aimed at creating and promoting co-ordination in the country’s youth development matters.
BBQ spoke to Yershen Pillay to find out how the president’s new vision will translate into poverty alleviation and development across South Africa.
As with any merger, Pillay says there is a “multitude of challenges in building a new culture and instilling a fresh development philosophy” for the agency. He believes, however, that the newly formed agency has a strong team in place to overcome such challenges and establish the NYDA as a centre of excellence for youth development.
“The main challenge facing the NYDA is certainly that of addressing the scourge of youth unemployment and utilising the limited resources at our disposal,” explains Pillay.
Statistics indicate that youths constitute 70% of the total population that is unemployed, and information from the International Labour Organization suggests that youth unemployment globally is likely to top 100 million by the end of 2009, with approximately 300 million youths being underemployed.
Pillay believes youth unemployment is both a local and global challenge, requiring much needed attention by an institution such as the NYDA.
President Zuma appointed long-term youth activist Pillay to the agency’s first director-general position, tasking him at the launch of the agency with developing “initiatives that seek to advance the economic development of young people”.
The NYDA integrates its core aims to serve the youth into a variety of mechanisms. “We want to initiate, facilitate, co-ordinate and monitor youth development interventions aimed at reducing youth unemployment and promoting social cohesion. This entails developing an Integrated Youth Development Plan and Strategy for South Africa, facilitating the economic participation and empowerment of youth, initiating programmes aimed at poverty alleviation, rural development, the combating of crime, substance abuse and social decay and developing,” says Pillay.
He sees the promotion of access to “quality education for all youth” as one of the major challenges as the agency moves forward, and is adamant that all young people need to be skilled to enable easy absorption into a rapidly transforming labour market.
“In order to achieve the objectives outlined in the National Youth Policy for 2009–2014, the NYDA will seek to partner and assist organs of the state, the private sector and civil society organisations in promoting a uniform approach to matters relating to or involving youth development,” says Pillay.
The NYDA has identified eight key performance areas aimed at integrating and mainstreaming youth development in all organs of the state, private sector and civil society. “Each of the areas relates to facilitating greater economic participation and empowerment, prioritising education and skills development, ensuring that young people register and meaningfully participate in the National Youth Service programme,” Pillay explains.
“Promoting social cohesion among the youth and maintaining a presence through the establishment of provincial and local chapters of the NYDA,” he adds, when commenting on the need to link national objectives with grassroots access and opportunities.
But will the NYDA serve as more than simply a product of past legislation? Pillay is adamant that it will. “Our role includes making well-informed and structured inputs on national legislation and policies through our lobbying and advocacy work, ensuring that we provide a monitoring and evaluation function for integrating youth development initiatives into government work.”
The promotion of effective and efficient management of resources is an additional objective that Pillay has set out to achieve.
To date, the NYDA has put in place targets for each of the stated objectives. In the area of economic participation for one, Pillay hopes the agency will create approximately 59 800 jobs in the next calendar year while supporting the creation of 7 200 new businesses. “We also plan to issue approximately 30 000 micro-loans (between R1 000 and R100 000), approximately 450 loans to co-operatives and 160 to youth-owned SMEs.”
The NYDA also seeks to ensure that 60% of all loans are allocated to young women, while 65% are allocated to youth from peri-urban, semi-rural and rural areas. “In terms of education and skills development, we are targeting approximately 35 000 Grade 8 to 12 learners to participate in entrepreneurship programmes nationally, while seeking to empower over 500 000 young people through the provision of career guidance services,” says Pillay, in answer to a question on how the education challenge he previously identified will be tackled by the NYDA.
But despite core objectives and an already long list of plans, Pillay has a sobering message for those who remain sceptical of the new agency in light of the performance of its predecessors.
“The NYDA is certainly not in the business of performing miracles. Our vision is to ensure that every young active and willing person is involved in some form of decent employment.
“However, we cannot provide jobs to every young unemployed person in the space of three to five years,” says Pillay.
As a consequence, Pillay says the NYDA has no choice but to adopt a targeted approach to youth development. “Targets have been set for different areas of development, and the performance and ultimate success of the NYDA should be measured against such targets.”
He adds that driving sustainable and meaningful change takes time and effort. “It will take us some time to make a significant impact on the lives of every young person, but what is important is that a plan is in place, with clear targets and the NYDA should be able to report on progress made annually.”
Pillay believes that strong and sustainable partnerships will to a large extent determine the success or failure of the agency.
“Partnerships with government departments, the private sector and civil society organisations will be critical to the success of the NYDA. More importantly, is the support of young people themselves in actively participating and driving the work of the NYDA. The NYDA belongs to all young South Africans and its success will depend on the role played by every young person in driving sustainable and meaningful change.
“There is only so much the NYDA can do with limited resources and thus the emphasis on building strong and sustainable partnerships to avoid duplication of work and leverage more resources for youth development. We certainly believe that we have the correct strategy and business models to effectively and efficiently implement planned youth development interventions and ultimately reach our targets set for addressing key challenges such as youth unemployment, skills development and social cohesion,” he says.
Pillay is convinced that the true success of partnerships not only lies in working with large and existing private and governmental sectors.
The NYDA is looking to the youth themselves to serve at the core of the agency’s partnership approach: “Greater awareness of the support mechanisms out there coupled with higher levels of youth activism will indeed contribute to job creation and the building of sustainable livelihoods,” he notes.
“A socially conscious youth movement can make a difference in fostering community empowerment. Young South Africans need to be actively engaged in secondary and higher learning and start becoming ‘job creators’ in the economy. Ultimately, as the youth, we should be more aware of our responsibilities than our rights and promote a culture of service rather than personal aggrandisement.
“To this end, our National Youth Service programme is our flagship programme and we hope to register at least 120 000 more young people onto the programme in the next calendar year. We also hope to facilitate the creation of opportunities for 15 000 young South Africans to contribute to our 2010 World Cup success through volunteer efforts and to the launch of at least one community project per province,” adds Pillay.
“Throughout our term of office, a number of exciting campaigns and projects will be launched. Just recently, the NYDA ‘Buy Youth Campaign’ was launched in Johannesburg as an enabling platform for industry buyers and youth-owned SMEs to convene, engage and conduct business, while creating access to market opportunities to benefit both industry buyers and young entrepreneurs. In the near future, we hope to launch the NYDA Social Enterprises Fund to encourage social enterprise development among the youth.”
In summing up, Pillay says his message to South Africa and its youth is one of co-operation. “This project belongs to each individual, community and organisation in our country who is committed to achieving the goals of nation-building and a better life for the people of our country. For the NYDA, any partner is the person or group seeking to work in mutual co-operation and service towards the attainment of these objectives, while we remain accountable to all South Africans in realising this dream.”
Garreth Bloor
