Hi there Crusaders.
This week I’m going to take a bit of a detour from my usual content – please bear with me, it’s important.
I’m devoting this article to highlighting the career challenges faced by the youth in Southern Africa.
As an entrepreneur myself, as well as a business mentor and coach, my focus is on helping career-oriented folks like yourself to get their businesses off the ground. As such, I generally direct my attention to individuals already established in the working environment; either as employees or employers. My target audience is between 25 and 55.
But what about the students who are going to matriculate in 2020?
Or the ones who matriculated in the last two years. . .
What does the future hold for them, and how can they learn to be entrepreneurs?
In an ideal world, our youth will walk straight into a university, college or a job straight out of school, and a successful career would naturally follow.
Unfortunately, their sobering reality is just the opposite…
South Africa’s youth are facing one of the worst unemployment crises in modern history as well as other significant challenges:
- The youth unemployment rate is 59%, with 3.5 million youths are not in employment, education or training (Stats SA).
- Only 45% of grade 12 have a chance of finding a job with only Matric on their CV (Stats SA).
- At R192,600, on average, to study a three-year degree, most parents can’t afford higher education fees (Old Mutual).
- More than 90% of student applications will be rejected because Universities are 10 times oversubscribed (Sunday World).
- Over 33% of graduates are jobless in 2020 (Stats SA).
Finding a job in South Africa is impossibly hard when you are young, unskilled and inexperienced—even with a degree!
Additionally, our economy shrunk by 51% in Q2 2020 due to the lockdown, which means the situation is set to become even more desperate for job-seeking youth.
Imagine how worried Grade 12s must be because of this reality…
How would you feel if you were in their shoes?
Our outdated, industrial-age schooling system trains our children to become employees which makes them dependent on job opportunities and employers.
That’s just wrong!
Right now, in South Africa, we need business owners more than we need employees.
Why are the youth not taught to become self-reliant individuals?
Why are they not taught to become entrepreneurs so they can create their own opportunities?
Now, this area of structured tertiary education is outside of my scope of business. I focus on guiding and supporting entrepreneurs and business crusaders to success through short-term training programmes and free advice.
I do not offer year-long formal schooling at a post-matric level.
Fortunately, a new education business has just been founded that does.
It’s called the School of Entrepreneurship (SoE), and it has been created to provide South Africa’s youth with the mindset and skills they need to become capable entrepreneurs.
Their Entrepreneurship Mastery Programme is run by real entrepreneurs as coaches. They provide students with the necessary knowledge and tools they need to start sustainable and profitable businesses within 12 months.
There is a shortage of jobs in South Africa and, by creating the next generation of business owners, we are creating jobs and alleviating the unemployment crisis.
Lastly, if you have any friends, family, colleagues or associates who have kids between 18 and 25, please forward this to them. It’s a really amazing opportunity and I’d like everybody in the country to hear about it.
Have a great week.
NB: Please note that some of the content (copy) of this article has been extracted verbatim from literature created by the SoE; with their permission.
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