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YOUTH FOCUS: Pinky Kondlo, director of social programmes for the Port Elizabeth-based Wilderness Foundation, at the WILD10 conference in Salamanca, Spain. Picture: JOHN YELD
Cape Town – A locally designed social intervention programme that is turning around the lives of several hundred young South Africans has garnered international awards and is attracting huge interest around the world.
But at home, the Eastern Cape-initiated Umzi Wethu Training Academy for Vulnerable Youth is struggling to attract finance to expand, and government support appears lukewarm – despite the country’s youth unemployment being a critical problem requiring urgent intervention.
This emerged at the recent 10th World Wilderness Congress, WILD10, in the Spanish city of Salamanca, where the programme was showcased by Pinky Kondlo, director of social programmes for the Wilderness Foundation of SA.
Umzi Wethu was the brainchild of the foundation’s executive director, Andrew Muir, who came up with a novel way of assisting young people – many of them orphans – who were trapped by poverty and the scourge of the HIV and Aids pandemic.
He initiated 12-month training programmes in the hospitality and conservation sectors that were designed to develop and groom potential young leaders, followed by job placements where they could gain work experience in their fields.
The programme was piloted in the Eastern Cape with its burgeoning wildlife-based ecotourism industry, and the first Umzi Wethu academy for hospitality training opened in Port Elizabeth in April 2006. A second academy opened in Somerset East in March 2008 to provide conservation-based training for nationally accepted accreditations as either field rangers or field guides.
And in 2010, this model was replicated at the Stellenbosch Hospitality Academy, under the leadership of the Sustainability Institute at the Lynedoch Eco Village, to provide opportunities for vulnerable young people in the Western Cape wine industry.
The programme has won Muir a Rolex award for enterprise and a Schwab Foundation “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. A crucial part of the training involves exposing the students to nature awareness, through sending them on wilderness trails run by the foundation, in line with the philosophy of “the healing powers of nature”.
Kondlo, a psychologist by training, told WILD10 that the students were asked to write about their experiences after taking part in these trails, and that many of them found having to deal with the wilderness a metaphor for their lives.
“The challenges that they encounter on the trails, they regard as symbolic of the trials and tribulations and triumphs of life,” Kondlo explained.
“Where they must climb mountains, hike and cross rivers – that is something that is symbolic to the hardships that they themselves face in their lives.
“So it’s quite amazing to find them able to make the link between the wilderness and life in general.”
From their trail journals, it was also apparent the students’ trail experiences had taught them to become more resilient and to persevere. “They find themselves much more able to commit to whatever they do, and they have a sense of worth – these are skills they learn from wilderness and trails.”
The programme has proved remarkably successful.
“To date we have been running for seven years, and we’ve placed some 245 young people,” Kondlo said.
“Our job placement rate is 95 percent, and the number of those who hold on to those positions is between 85 and 90 percent.”
But while the foundation had made “huge strides” in scaling up the programmes, there were financial constraints and challenges, she added.
“It’s quite hard to get the necessary financial resources to scale up.
“Currently, we’re trying to evaluate and get a real sense of the resources that are needed, and also what it means in terms of the integrity of the programme.
“You don’t want to dilute the model per se, to lose those key elements, but we also have to accommodate those contexts that are different from Port Elizabeth.
“So it’s quite challenging, but we would like to have more and more people benefit from the programme.”
Responding to a question, Kondlo said it was “quite hard” to get the government involved.
“At the end of the day they are the custodians of this programme, and in terms of sustainability we do need them for the programme to be able to go on and into the future.
“It is something we’re looking into seriously as an organisation, but it’s a slow process.
“It’s always a pity from our perspective that where we’ve had all this international recognition, at home we have to work so hard to get belief in the award-winning programmes that we have.
“It’s a tough one, but I believe we are on the right track.” – Weekend Argus
l On the web, http://www.umziwethu.org
l Yeld’s attendance at WILD10 is being sponsored by the Hans Hoheisen Trust.
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Article source: http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/scant-support-for-e-cape-youth-scheme-1.1597691