**17. Discussion of the sustainable learning environments strategy towards employability**

Against the backdrop of the common vision and the SWOT analysis discussed above, we jointly identified priorities that would drive the study towards creating sustainable learning environments. The latter were to be geared towards enhancing levels of employment among the identified group of youth in the Siyabuswa and Nkomazi municipalities. Priorities focused on enabling the youth to continue in the pursuit of job opportunities which they had already started preparing for, as well as those that they were creating for others. This implied that the evolving strategy was to enable them to improve their qualifications and deepen their experiences, in their chosen careers. At the same time the strategy was to enhance their levels of motivation and commitment in pursuance of their goals. All the above were to be done such that these youth could strengthen themselves beyond their imagined weaknesses. This seemed to be linked to improved academic and professional preparedness. These required better information about what the various jobs required, where to acquire the requisite qualifications and financial support to pursue them, as well as how to prepare adequately emotionally, intellectually, and otherwise for them. It is our view that immediately one is strong enough academically, professionally, and otherwise, the imagined challenges of the system become relatively easy to overcome as one then has alternative means of resolving and circumventing them.

Professor Estelle Boshoff, the Head of the Department of Industrial Psychology at the University of Mpumalanga assisted the project in securing and collating the documents showing the South African government's commitment and support for the promotion of the employability of the youth in the entire country. These documents included the planning documents of the *National Research Foundation, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences* which are South Africa's statutory research agencies. These provided us with the guidelines for conducting research in this project. For example, the *HSRC* on Education and Skills Development, Human and Social Development as well as Economic Performance and Development manuals address the objectives of the Economic Growth, Sustainable Development and Quality of Life as presented in the *National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) Policy Document, as well as the NRF's* Tertiary Education, Sociology, and Philosophy that includes the History of Education, Economics and Management, Labour, Education and Welfare Economics, to Development Studies and Sociology. While the above legislative and policy imperatives look like they are focusing on students in higher education, they at the same time include youth who are outside those institutions. The above focus is sharpened in the Youth Employability, Livelihoods and Entrepreneurship; Education, Skills Development; Youth Health and Healthy Lifestyle. *Skill Development Act focuses* on Quality Basic Education; Economy and Employment as well as Creating a Skilled Workforce. We used the above documents to educate ourselves as the co-researchers in the project. The documents also served as the basis for the evolving strategy. They also provided broad parameters for our practical interactions and activities. These documents were discussed during the second and third meetings of the teams in Siyabuswa and Nkomazi respectively. One of us facilitated the successful interactive discussions.

The next item in the strategy was compiling lists of companies, government departments, universities, technical and vocational education and training colleges, research institutes, agencies that could provide capital to start businesses and general service providers that could provide employment and/or training to unemployed youth. Our list consisted of over 400 such organisations and this list we circulated among all co-researchers. The particulars of these organisations included their areas of focus, the kind of skills and qualifications which they were prioritising, their website addresses, funding opportunities and how they could be contacted. Examples of such include engineering firms like the Transnet Freight Rail that gave preference to youth who needed training and employment in civil, electrical, and mechanical and metallurgical engineering, diesel mechanics, and welding. In compiling these lists we used the youth's credentials as basis so that there was compatibility between their areas of interest and that of the organisations. These were invited occasionally to present their services online via MS Teams and sometimes in-person.

The project received the greatest support from the University of Mpumalanga's Information and Communication Technology Department of Professor Wayi-Mgwebi and Professor Kalima. They opened access to the facilities and training at their community outreach project, for our youth on appointed dates. There they could learn basic computing skills that could further enhance their employability. More support was provided by Prof Sabela who is putting together a tracer-study project to find out the levels of youth unemployment in the Mpumalanga province with the intention of informing interventions such as this one.

Another significant input which has become part of the strategy came from South Africa's National Youth Development Agency (NYDA). The agency has conducted more than four interactive workshops and webinars, covering very important aspects to enhance the chances of employment. These included skills to assess oneself in terms of strengths and weaknesses as well as determining which areas still require improvement. The other areas taught by the NYDA involved preparing one's Curriculum Vitae as well as rehearsing for the interview. They also shared with the youth the skills to enhance their professional images.

### **18. Findings and conclusion**

Although we derived a few successes, we believe that more can still be achieved if more and able stakeholders would participate. For example, within the six months of the project being rolled out, three youths have secured employment, 10 more have obtained admission into higher education institutions for 2024. There is also a promise for 20 learnerships being granted by the end of the year. Learnerships, while they are not full employment, they enable the youth to acquire skills and knowledges that would give them a competitive urge later when competing in the labour market.

Furthermore, the study has shown that there is a huge need for support among the youth of Siyabuswa and Nkomazi to be employed. The strategy which we developed in this study relied heavily on the motivation and willingness of the youth to learn new skills and acquire knew knowledges for it to succeed. All these require enough time and effort for them to derive good outcomes. It involves the totality of the individual youth and his/he relationships which entangle one at all the time, for success to be achieved. The strategy was also inclusive in that those youth who were excluded from descent and full employment the first time around, were now given a second chance to improve themselves. The study would have benefitted more if there were personnel that were fully dedicated to supporting these young people, as most of us who are currently in the project, have other focuses as required by our conditions of employment. It continues to be an unpleasant experience to see so much talent goes to *Employability as Inclusive Entanglement in Relationalities: A Design in Sustainable Learning… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.114033*

waste when the youth are not supported. They seem to have the everything required to get employed, but they need support in terms of knowing how to take advantage of the job opportunities whenever they are presented. Sometimes it is important to put the information about the type of job opportunities, processes to follow to apply as well as their criteria for employment directly in their faces, for them to take courage to exploit it. The strategy that we developed provided the holding environment where these young people could reflect on their plight in peace without fear of being judged, compared to anybody, or admonished for trying and failing. We allowed them to venture into the unknown spaces on their own with our support at the ready whenever needed.

The study has also shown that the issue of unemployment of youth is a complexity requiring multimodal intervention at multi-layered levels, encompassing multiple perspectives afforded by a battery of theoretical positions, specialisms, and stakeholders. Attending to this scourge needs interventions mounted on an understanding of what constitutes relational entanglements that construct one's identity, performance, and identity among others. Being employed or unemployed cannot be simplistically ascribed to one factor or variable like curriculum that one has been exposed to or poor cognitive abilities. It is going beyond the scope of the five capitals that Tomlinson identifies to incorporate relationalities that decentre the understanding of the individual and undividable entity. One's performance, hence ability to be employed is a function of a myriad of influences that include other human beings, animate and inanimate non-humans as well as the more-than-humans as in computers with their Artificial Intelligence (AI). Attempting to respond to the challenges of unemployment as the study is beginning to show, involves an equally sophisticated approach which creates sustainable learning environments for these youth.

### **Acknowledgements**

"The support of the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development towards this research/activity is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at, are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the DSI-NRF CoE in Human Development.

### **Author details**

Sechaba M.G. Mahlomaholo1 \* and Makeresemese R. Mahlomaholo2

1 University of Mpumalanga, South Africa

2 University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

\*Address all correspondence to: QhosolaM@ukzn.ac.za

© 2024 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
