Interview: Youth Employment Service (YES)
Ground-breaking initiative creates 33 000 12-month quality work experiences for SA’s youth SA Business Integrator spoke to Tashmia Ismail-Saville, Chief Executive of Youth Employment Service (YES), a joint initiative between business, labour and government, about the youth unemployment challenges South Africa is facing and how they plan to address these challenges. YES recognises the critical role the youth play in shaping our economy and our country. Yet seven million young people are shut out of the economy. This is why YES works on innovative and creative means through partnerships and technological bestpractice, to create 12-month quality work experiences for South Africa’s youth. The only way to reduce inequality is to get us all to work, to build incomes and to invest inclusively. Now is the time to say YES and give young people a life-changing chance. We have collaboratively created 33 000 YES youth jobs at the moment, which is enough to fill Orlando Stadium. A wholesome movement can get us to fill the Calabash FNB Stadium to capacity by December. YES is an NPO unencumbered by bureaucracy or for-profit motives, driven by business and supported by government and labour. Government can’t do it alone and business needs a country that works for it to work. Business and society need to join the dots. Every new job means a new taxpayer. You simply cannot leave half the citizenry out of the economy and expect that a better future will materialise. Only together can we build the capacity to change things at the scale needed, nothing short of what a national movement has the potential to achieve. South Africa’s economic reality won’t just go away, we have to actively change our mindset, methods and motives to equip and create opportunities for youth. Tell us more about your educational and employment background. In 2009, I completed an MBA at GIBS where I was the recipient of the Corporate Finance prize. I achieved a distinction for my final dissertation on macroeconomic factors impacting mergers and acquisitions in developing markets. In my years employed at GIBS business school, I founded and headed the GIBS Inclusive Markets
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INTERVIEW SABI Vol11 Mar-Aug20.indd 26
2020/03/02 12:38 PM
