The YES turnkey solution seamlessly integrates job creation for youth into the Mining Charter and social and labour plans (SLPs). It is a vehicle for mining companies to generate jobs outside of the mining industry to co-create communities that thrive with self-reliant economies.
The Youth Employment Service (YES), a South African not-for-profit (NPO), is a joint national initiative between business, government and labour that aims to address the youth unemployment crisis in South Africa by enabling 12-month quality work experiences (QWEs) to unemployed youth. YES approaches the private sector to create these opportunities, and in return, they receive up to two levels on their B-BBEE scorecard. Since being founded just over three years ago, YES has worked with over 2,200 companies to create more than 82,000 work experiences, all with no state funding. This has seen R4.7 billion being ploughed into communities and the economy through YES Youth salaries alone.
YES is renowned for its B-BBEE level-up incentive, which was created in partnership with the Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition (dtic). This piece of innovative legislation (Gazette 41866 and Practice Note 41975) is rooted in shared value – a framework developed by Michael Porter to guide business in creating positive social and environmental impact through their operations, processes and products while ensuring this impact is also beneficial to the company
But YES is also looking beyond B-BBEE to deliver more sector-specific solutions that deliver shared value to company, country, and community.
YES CEO, Ravi Naidoo says that SA’s mining industry “is an appropriate metaphor for the country. It has all the elements needed to be a world leader, successfully shaping a future that drives socio-economic development and transforming our economy and society. But its potential remains unrealised.”
The crux of the SLP is to create a blueprint for how a mining company will share the financial value it reaps from the mines with the communities they surround, and essentially uplift these towns and their people beyond mining.
This is where YES comes in. Through YES’s turnkey solution, resource and mining companies can create youth work experiences with community-based NPOs working in some of the most critical sectors in South Africa, including education, healthcare, digital and conservation.
The YES turnkey solution works with 33 YES-vetted host partners across the country to allow companies that cannot place youth internally an affordable way to create broad-based impact through uplifting communities. YES host partners work in high-impact sectors such as healthcare, education, digital, early childhood development, and conservation where youth live, meaning young people can play an important part in building their own communities.
The YES model can also see young people deployed in community-based SMEs, effectively boosting the capacity of local businesses to deliver goods and services to their neighbouring mines and beyond.
This solution integrates seamlessly with the Local Economic Development (LED) and Human Resource Development plans of the SLP.
The YES host partners help capacitate local businesses, schools, clinics and NPOs with dynamic young people who are eager to learn and grow their careers. This feeds into poverty eradication (an LED element).
Part of the Human Resources Development plan indicates that mines must not only develop their own workers’ skills, but the skills of community members. By placing youth within a host partner, mining companies can uplift communities and economies beyond the mines these towns surround.
YES also allows mines to take their existing skills development programmes up a level by pairing them this work-readiness initiatives post-training. As Naidoo notes, “skills development is only effective if it leads to a job in which a young person can practice and hone their skills – and that job doesn’t necessarily have to be in mining.”
The sustainable benefits of YES for mining companies and communities
Creating youth jobs in sectors that build economic, social, and environmental stability in communities (through the turnkey solution) is an effective way to systemically and holistically reach environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, and empower communities beyond mining. These ESG outcomes will also assist the relevant mine in improving its attractiveness to investors. The YES integrated offering promotes youth jobs that simultaneously dove-tails with B-BBEE scorecard, ESG initiatives, the Mining Charter and SLPs.
“Get this right, and the industry, our youth and the fiscus could soar. International investors will be more attracted to our mining companies as they build a stronger ESG footprint. And by empowering the youth, the mining industry will help create the next generation of workers, consumers, thriving communities and taxpayers,” says Naidoo
Join the movement of over 2,200 corporate partners like Anglo American Platinum, Kumba Iron Ore, Exxaro, and South 32 who have signed on to create a brighter future for youth.