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Lifestyle/Community

A new generation struggle’s with empowerment

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OWN CORRESPONDENT

Pictured: Marc Lubner with the winner of the bursary awarded to them by Afrika Tikkun to take part in our Child and Youth Development Programme at the Puthaditjaba Centre in Alexandra township. The learners are: Sibonile Jijwa and Duduzile Maribe.

According to a press release from Afrika Tikkun, one of the nine central challenges outlined in the National Development Plan is that too few people work. While it is true that 37 per cent of youth aged 18 – 24 do not work, it is also true that the potential is tremendous.

The youth bring a great deal of innovation, which only needs to be harnessed.

The winner of Step-up 2 a Start Up Trailblazer of the Year, is Gavin Watson, CEO of Bosasa. This annual award, which was first given to Bertie Lubner, founder of Afrika Tikkun, in 2014, is given to social benefactors who have pioneered in the area of entrepreneurship and youth development.

Watson has for many years been active in skills development. He emphasised the importance of building teams in accomplishing anything of worth, and was praised in turn by his core team from Bosasa as being one of the most accessible and innovative CEOs in South Africa.

Buthi Manamela, Deputy Minister in the Presidency, said at the function: “Young people will be putting our country onto the map through their ideas.”

There were plenty ideas ventured during the evening – from an instrument to break down communication barriers, to a mobile application that connects commuters and taxi drivers, and a product to be installed in townships to prevent fires.

Keynote speaker, Minister of Small and Medium Enterprise Development, Lindiwe Zulu, encouraged the learners to find their own ’76, just as her generation had to. But while her ’76 was political freedom, this generation’s struggle would be for economic empowerment.

“The government has realised that political power without economic empowerment is meaningless,” she stressed, but cautioned that just as the struggle fought in 1976 was for the freedom of all people, the struggle for economic empowerment should be for the benefit of all.

Marc Lubner, CEO of Afrika Tikkun, a strategic partner to Step Up To A Start Up and one of the prize-givers at the ceremony cautioned the winners that to be an entrepreneur is a very challenging but rewarding venture.

“We believe that in order to break the poverty cycle, we must enable South Africa’s youth to find employment or, better still, to create it themselves. This initiative will certainly promote and facilitate a culture of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial spirit amongst school going children and certainly complements Afrika Tikkun’s Cradle to Career Model and Programmes”.

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