YES (Youth Employment Service) creates work opportunities for unemployed black youth, and offers businesses the opportunity to gain up to 2 B-BBEE levels should they participate.
Yes4Youth’s Yoga4Alex programme helps young people gain a sense of their own self-worth and develops an understanding that they are responsible for their own success and happiness. Students leave the programme with a yoga teacher’s qualification, basic computer skills certificate as well as qualifications in teaching English speaking and reading, and conscious communications.
During the year, students gain experience in being a paired reader with grade 2 and great 8 learners at schools in Alexandra, Johannesburg and teach 10 yoga classes during the year. Along with the computer skills they learn, most students save up to buy themselves a computer during the year. The program foregrounds teaching initiative: the students are allowed to make mistakes and supported in coming up with plan b, if plan a doesn’t work out. This instils creativity and lateral thinking.
The yoga training course is an ideal way to achieve a crucial mindset shift in these marginalised young people. All the youth are shifting their internal narrative and are taking the initiative to have a plan in place for further work or study when their contract comes to an end.
Digiata’s commitment:
Via YES, we hire 12 unemployed youths on a 12-month fixed term contract, paying them a salary each month as they complete the career readiness training program at Yoga4Alex.