UP’s Future Africa Institute recently played host to a group of young people who were part of a training programme that seeks to address skills inequalities and poverty in rural communities.

A group of 50 young people from Marapyane in Mpumalanga and Matshiretsane in Limpopo recently spent a week at the University of Pretoria’s (UP’s) Future Africa Institute to attend a training programme that aimed to address inequalities in rural areas.

The training forms part of the UP Centre for the Advancement of Sustainable Higher Education Futures’ (CASHEF’s) KAP-HES community programme, which is funded by the Australian Agency for International Development (Australian Aid) through the Australian High Commission in Pretoria. The programme seeks to address skills inequalities and poverty in rural communities, and equips participants with workplace, health literacy and physical education skills, among others.

The project was launched recently at Future Africa, UP's Pan-African platform for collaborative research. Speaking at the launch, Professor Samuel Adeyemo, Director of CASHEF at UP, said: “I hope this project will provide opportunities to the young people here today and further enhance efforts to reduce poverty and inequality in South Africa. To our participants, you are the ambassadors of your communities. I want to encourage you to learn, network, grow and make an impact in your communities through this programme.”

The programme includes workplace skills training in partnership with UP’s Faculty of Education and Enterprises UP, as well as health literacy and youth sports training in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Prof Chika Sehoole, Dean of the Faculty of Education, who attended the CASHEF KAP-HES community programme launch, emphasised the importance of initiatives aimed at addressing the challenges faced by young people who are “not in education, employment or training”.

“I’m particularly excited about this project because as a faculty we started this journey in 2017, where we identified the need to target young people who had passed matric well but were not in education, employment or training,” Prof Sehoole said. “We partnered with the Department of Basic Education, and went out to districts to find young people who had passed matric well, were interested in becoming teachers, who met the requirements for receiving a bursary and met our requirements for admission into UP. We recruited them into the faculty, and this particular project has been running for six years now. I’m proud to say that, as we speak, we are graduating young people who go into communities and make a difference through teaching, having acquired a quality teacher education qualification from UP.”

David Geyer, Deputy High Commissioner at the Australian High Commission in South Africa, encouraged the participants to dream big and not allow their socio-economic conditions to deter them.

“I was the first person in my family to get matric and go to university,” he said. “I was the first person in my family to get a degree, a passport and travel overseas. I grew up in a coal mining town in Australia. When I was growing up, I did not expect to become a diplomat, and the idea of becoming a diplomat was one that was completely beyond anything I would have ever imagined. It’s really important to dream big and think about the opportunities in the world. Use this week to be a trailblazer; dream, think big and use this week to help yourself make a plan.”

A month after their stay at Future Africa, the participants will be involved in community-based project events set to take place at the Patrick Mankolane Primary School in Mpumalanga and Maokeng Secondary School in Limpopo from 25 to 26 April.