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South Africa: Youth to Get More out of Internships - NYDA |
| Source: |
www.sanews.gov.za |
| Source Date: |
Tuesday, May 27, 2014 |
| Focus: |
Electronic and Mobile Government, Citizen Engagement, Internet Governance
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| Country: |
South Africa |
| Created: |
May 27, 2014 |
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“Entrepreneurship has a great potential to increase youth economic participation and therefore, the NYDA believes that entrepreneurship should be factored into internship programmes so that interns also have a choice of self-employment upon completion of the internship.
“However, it is acknowledged that factoring entrepreneurship will not be easy, given that internships are mainly work experience programmes and this is how employers view them,” said Pillay.
The study found that the absorption rate into the labour market of those who have undergone internship was low, with 42% of those who completed internship programmes still unemployed.
“This is worrisome and as South Africans, we need to interrogate the reasons for low absorption rates further,” said Pillay.
The study indicated that in some cases, permanent employees were not supportive to interns as they felt threated by them.
Commissioned between October 2012 and October 2013, the report provides insights by investigating the activities and analysing the experiences of the three role players involved in the roll out of internships, namely the interns, the institutions that produce them and the employers that provide the internships.
The outcomes of the report come in the wake of rising unemployment levels, particularly among the youth.
Whilst statistics show that unemployment is significantly lower amongst those who have higher education qualifications, graduate unemployment is also on the increase.
Although there are no official statistics on graduate unemployment, estimates indicate that it is high -- between 300 000 and 600 000.
The study highlights challenges with interns not being provided with adequate opportunities to learn. This happens because some interns mainly do general administrative work, as opposed to work that will enhance their skills and future employability prospects.
However, it was encouraging that 69.5% of those who participated in the study felt more than 50% of their work activities were aligned with their qualifications.
While 64% of interns who participated in the study reported that they were provided with job descriptions, the job descriptions were not always implemented as envisaged.
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South Africa: Youth to Get More out of Internships - NYDA More needs to be done to improve the effectiveness of internship programmes that prepare graduates to go into the labour market the National Youth Development Agency NYDA said on Tuesday A study commissioned by the NYDA and the South African Graduates Development Agency SAGDA found that not much was being done in internship programmes to expose interns to entrepreneurial opportunities with only about 31 of those who participated in the study having indicated that they were exposed to some form of entrepreneurship training NYDA Chairperson Yershen Pillay said entrepreneurship has great potential to increase youth economic participation
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