Today, the Youth Employment Service (YES) updated SAMED members on the progress of our partnership. Since launching the partnership a month ago, three SAMED members have signed up to YES creating a cumulative 140 youth work experiences!
140 young people will gain experience and employment. 140 young people will have the potential to contribute to the future capacitation of the healthcare sector. 140 young people are grateful for the opportunity.
We heard about Medtronic and one of their hosted youth, Boitumelo Ketlhapile, who spoke about how this opportunity has changed her life. Boitumelo Ketlhapile worked with the Aurum institute as a lay counsellor gaining valuable interpersonal skills on how to manage HIV and TB patients in a healthcare facility (more on her story here).
Medtronic is in the fourth YES programme and has created 130 youth jobs over all four programmes. The organisation opted for a hybrid programme, using both the internal model and the turnkey solution. They have placed 37 youth within their own business and 63 youth in implementation partners across five provinces. Of their YES Youth, 65% are female, showing that gender equality and empowering women is top of Medtronic’s mind.
Youth have been placed in a variety of roles and positions that capacitate the health and education sectors, such as community health workers, teaching assistants, lay counsellors, administration support, data capturers, tracers and many more.
In addition to this, YES is pleased to announce its new chief executive, Ravi Naidoo, who will be steering them forward from November 2021.
Holding a master’s degree from Harvard, Ravi joins YES with over 25 years of experience in creating and managing a range of social change and impact programmes. He has worked with diverse stakeholders, including trade unions, the public sector, and private sector fund management, to find ways to implement programmes in complex institutional environments.
His recent successes include the establishment of the South African National Green Fund (at the Development Bank of South Africa), managing the multi-stakeholder “Health Roadmap” that culminated in the government’s AIDS turnaround strategy (resulting in average life expectancy increasing from 49 to 62 years), and the restructuring of the Unemployment Insurance Fund to include, for the first time, coverage for over 600,000 domestic workers.
This October and moving forward, let’s continue to say YES to new beginnings, to change, to rebuilding South Africa. It’s now more important than ever. A win-win-win for county, company and youth.
SAMED hopes that the YES collaboration will benefit many more young job-seekers in medtech industry or the broader healthcare sector. SAMED is committed to making a difference and encourages all its members to get involved with transformation programmes and claim incentives.
How you can say “YES”:
- Host a youth – offering a YES role or roles within your own organisation
- Sponsor a youth – sponsor a role within one of the YES implementation partners (implementation partner model)
- Host a youth at a YES Hub – and access enterprise and supplier development points.
We have the opportunity to build an inclusive society where youth can be at the centre of reimagining our future. Let’s reinvest in our youth and health sector for a more resilient and inclusive South Africa. To register with YES, click here.
