Publication: Wineland Media
Author: Unspecified
Image: Y4T Youth Photographer
Last year, Sanlam’s Youth4Tourism initiative was awarded the 2025 Trialogue Strategic CSI Award for its innovative approach to tackling youth unemployment while revitalising South Africa’s tourism sector.
The Youth4Tourism initiative, which partners with the public and private sectors to create job opportunities for young South Africans and strengthen tourism, was launched in 2023 in partnership with the non-profit organisation Youth Employment Service (YES), South Africa’s leading private-sector youth employment programme.
Through this initiative, Sanlam and YES provides a pipeline for South Africa’s talented youth to access opportunities in the country’s vibrant tourism sector, while addressing the scourge of youth unemployment and the effects of COVID-19 on the sector.
The first phase of the programme, which ran from June 2023 to July 2024, trained and placed 1040 young people in YES programmes with strategic partners.
The programme supported placements across diverse tourism sub-sectors including wine tourism, where participants were exposed to roles such as hospitality management trainees, food and beverage trainees, and trainee chefs. “The training provided is not specific to YES, but is offered through the hosting entity to ensure the training is applicable to that region and establishment,” explains Tsholo Mogotsi, Chief Partnerships Officer at Youth Employment Service (YES).
A concurrent Sanlam “gig” fund was paired with a quality work experience programme available during these 12 months, and supported 450 gig opportunities valued at R2.1 million. “The Youth4Tourism Gig Fund was designed to empower young people by equipping them with practical, industry-relevant skills in content creation, photography, videography, illustration, and design, with a strong focus on the tourism sector,” he says.
Beyond skills training, the programme intentionally bridged youth talent with real market demand. “We identified tourism businesses that required marketing and content creation support to improve their visibility and storytelling.”
“Through this model, young creatives were matched with tourism businesses to co-create high-quality, purpose-driven content that showcased destinations, services, and experiences to both local and international audiences,” he says. “This approach allowed youth not only to gain hands-on experience but also to build professional portfolios of work, positioning them for future gig opportunities, employment, or entrepreneurship within the creative and tourism ecosystems.”
For their part, Sanlam actively engaged the services of young entrepreneurs from the programme and facilitated their exposure across the business by promoting their services and recommending them to various internal teams and subsidiaries. This enabled practical and meaningful business opportunities, increased visibility for youth-owned enterprises, and supported greater supplier diversity by helping Sanlam teams identify capable suppliers aligned to their needs, sparking collaboration across the organisation.
Recognising that entrepreneurship offers a long-term solution to youth unemployment, Sanlam and YES subsequently created the Youth4Business (Y4B) Initiative, designed to accelerate youth-owned SMMEs that have demonstrated their capability and market readiness. Through this initiative, the youth established and registered their own businesses. While Sanlam ensured that they received the necessary development and entrepreneurial support to effectively manage and sustain their enterprises.
“Many Y4B beneficiaries began their journey through the Youth4Tourism (Y4T) programme, where they built strong, traceable portfolios and references through real-world assignments,” Tsholo says. “These SMMEs are now well-positioned to collaborate with corporate partners across multiple sectors, including wine farms and wine-related businesses.”
Wine businesses can tap into this talent pool by sharing their procurement and supplier needs, enabling YES to match opportunities with capable, youth-owned SMMEs, and by engaging Y4B SMMEs as service providers – particularly in areas such as creative videography and photography, marketing, tourism services, tech, green solutions, and construction.
“Our SMME network spans several provinces, including the Western Cape, Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape, and Gauteng, and covers a diverse range of sectors,” Tsholo says. “SMME portfolios can be shared on request, and we also have a live Y4B platform where corporates and businesses can browse our SMME directory. This creates a practical pathway for wine businesses to access vetted youth-owned suppliers.”
Sanlam’s Youth4Tourism initiative
