Youth given job-savvy skills

MOSA MAOENG

MASERU – Through its ‘GO Teach’ project, SOS Children’s Village capacitated 170 youth on business development, CV writing as well as interview skills on a two weeks boot camp that commenced on June 23 to July 2.  Being the third boot camp, SOS opened doors for the youth with the age range from 15-30 although it is usually opened for youth from the age of 15-25.

The youth came from SOS programmes Maseru, Leribe and Quthing, Makoanyane ICT Hub, Baylor as well as those around the community surrounding SOS. In 2021, SOS Children’s Village and DHL signed a Memorandum of Understanding to implement the project. GO Teach mandate is to empower young people with employability skills, commencing with about 12 young people growing up to a point where now they have about 195 young people registered with the project.

In an interview with Public Eye this week, SOS Projects & Youth Coordinator ‘Mamatete Bridget Letsoso highlighted that SOS and DHL implemented the project together to ensure that young people stand a fair chance in the field of competing for employment.

She noted that they capacitate young people with skills of employability, entrepreneurship to mention a few, where young people learn from the concept of thinking of becoming a business person to a maximum level where some of them have already established a business.

She said, “They start at a point where they think of a business idea and then they learn how to write business proposals until a point where they start them and following that have started, they go through a process of mentorship. This is done by our partners at DHL and also the National University of Lesotho (NUL) Faculty of Business Administration and this year we had the Ministry of Gender, Youth and Social Development in the department of youth as our partners.”

Letsoso said among other things they capacitated them with CV writing and interview skills noting, “some of them are looking forward to being employed.”

She said they even conduct mock interviews where they can actually get the practice of how it looks like.

Letsoso said for sustainability related financials, the boot camp included financial literacy facilitated by DHL and regional mentors. Mental health and psychosocial support was a greater part of their engagement because they “want to build a person who is holistically stable and resilient”.

“We also had Kick4Life coming through with the issues of climate change . . . we wanted them to be environmentally responsible,” said Letsoso.

She noted that some of them did not obtain good results and do not have enough funds to go back and repeat the grades they did not perform well in at school.

She noted that they brought together various institutions such as the NUL, Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT), Katleho Training Institute, Dona@Balos as well as the National Health Training College (NHTC).

Letsoso noted that going forward they hope to cover all the 10 districts where SOS operates adding that for the time being, they are simply restricted by lack of funds.

She added that they are working on going digital so that those who could not make it to the boot camp physical can have access to the trainings through the virtual platforms.

Among the participants included, Thato Mabelebele from SOS Children’s village Quthing, a graduate from the Limkokwing University who mentioned that it was the third boot camp she attended said what was new for her was the behaviour awareness session where they were taught how to portray themselves while going out and how to brand themselves.

She mentioned the mental health session where they were taught to acknowledge their emotions.

She urged her fellow peers to be active and show up and to continue learning.

Bokang Theoha a member of SOS and a musician noted that he has gained a lot about CV writing  – a good skill to use in the future.

He said not many people can actually write a CV and interview skills where they learnt about posture during the interview noting that this would give many youth the chance of being employable.

From the Makoanyane ICT Hub Tšepiso Mokhahlane said she was exposed to many opportunities such as taking tours to the DHL facilities where they learnt how the company operates.

She said she learnt how to cooperate with people, how to approach things and how to hold herself around people.

Kabelo Khobotlo noted that the youth have so many opportunities that come their way stating that some gave up due to challenges.

He however said the boot camp has shown him that there are so many spaces open for youth; they just need to approach them open-mindedly.

He noted that the lessons will change their lives for the better.

He noted that patience and focus eventually leads to achieving goals.