Sivuka Youth uses training and coaching to address our youth unemployment crisis

With an alarmingly high 46.3% youth unemployment rate in South Africa, translating to millions of young people (university graduates included) unable to find work, the local training and recruitment company believes that this crisis stems from a lack of youth support and skills development. As the country’s future leaders, Sivuka advocates for youth empowerment and development to assist young people with obtaining employment and excelling in them, authentically. This sets to inspire positive change for their peers and communities in the long run.

As an accredited skills provider, the small business specialises in self-mastery-based training, employment skills development, recruitment and career coaching for young South Africans. In doing so, Sivuka is determined to not only close the graduate skills gap but encourage young people to find their voice, discover their purpose, and use their talents to make a real difference in the world.

“As a proudly South African company, we are incredibly passionate about the amount of talent and tenacity our youth have, and we are doing everything in our power to unleash this talent in the best way possible,” explains Ashalia Maharajh, founder and director of Sivuka Youth.

“We bring graduates, unemployed individuals and organisations together to liberate and transform youth development across South Africa. We are also a Black-woman-owned and run BEE level one provider, empowers our clients, staff, suppliers and youth to see sustainable change in our country.”

Another key differentiator? Sivuka focuses on self-mastery, personal effectiveness and emotional intelligence (EQ/EI) in its youth training courses. The youth development specialist believes that self-mastery is a critical driver for young people, profoundly impacting their career trajectories and how they will lead and transform the country in the future. Research backs this up, with EQ accounting for nearly 90% of what sets high performers apart and playing a key role in leadership effectiveness.

In just three years, Sivuka Youth have individually coached over 1,000 young people, facilitated 10 corporate youth work readiness programmes for corporates in the country – which consisted of about 220 young delegates. Also, Sivuka is currently developing an online business professional learnership that can be done online.

Sivuka’s work also included work implemented for local and global organisations, having consulted and designed learning strategies for five global organisations, in addition to successfully assessed and recruited 58 learners and interns for organisations.

Lastly, Sivuka Youth’s database spans over 20, 000 strong talented youth that have been through a free personality test and received a free CV.

So far, the training company has partnered with more than 20 companies to place 58 young people in jobs, as well as developed three training and change management programmes that have helped employees excel in the workplace.

Sivuka’s core aim is to deliver an end-to-end youth solution for organisations. The ability to train interns, mentors and managers to become better coaches using unique training techniques has resulted in Sivuka receiving a 97% average training evaluation across all programmes.

Sivuka’s goal is to match more businesses with talented young people and empower these young people with the skills they need to succeed and grow South Africa, thus doing their part to solve our youth unemployment crisis.