City of Cape Town ‘not promoting its initiatives among the youth’

Cape Town – Youth groups and community-based organisations are appealing to the City to work with them to better afford local youngsters the opportunity to interact and participate in initiatives that are designed for them.

This after the City made a call to budding young entrepreneurs to apply for this year’s edition of its #YouthStartCT Challenge – an entrepreneurship-punting competition targeting the youth.

Advocating for the initiative, Zahid Badroodien, the Mayco member for Community Services and Health, said the challenge was to provide a youth development programme that afforded opportunities for all involved.

He said: “The initiative works to give young people with bright ideas the space and opportunity to test those ideas and bring them to life, and also advances efforts around job creation and social upliftment critical needs in many of our communities.”

Badroodien said that to reach aspiring entrepreneurs the City made use of social media networks to reach intended audiences, and had been working with tertiary institutions over the years to reach young people.

“Over the past five years, we have noted that the use of most social media platforms is effective. However, we not only rely on that but we also use posters and mass emails that we share with our partners like UWC, False Bay College, Seda. These institutions then share them with their various platforms,” said Badroodien.

However, according to organisations on the ground the inspired initiative is barely reaching its target audience.

Former participant and one of the 2013 challenge winners, Wendy Somlayi, said that although the programme was good, the City could do more to reach young people who were hungry for such opportunities.

She said: “What I have noticed is that not many young people in local communities and on the Cape Flats know about this challenge. If there was something the City could work on, it is to come into communities, advertise, and work with community-based organisations and youth-focused groups to encourage youths. Young people are hungry for such programmes; they only need to know about them, they need to be given access.”

Lavender Hill Youth Group Facilitator Ralph Bouwers concurred with Somlayi’s statement saying that for initiatives such as the challenge to reach everyone, including youth living in remote and impoverished areas, the City needed to strengthen its ties with community-based organisations that were working with youth on the ground.

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Cape Argus