Celebrating Youth 2020
South Africa to Begin Phased Reopening of Schools in June
South Africa will begin reopening schools in June, allowing students to return in a phased approach in a continuing effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Classes will start nationally for students from grades 7 and 12. The final years of junior and senior school respectively. Schools have been closed since March 27, when the government introduced a nationwide lockdown to slow the pace of Covid-19 infections.
The South African government has added additional mobile classrooms and infrastructure such as sanitization facilities and water tankers where needed to prepare schools to reopen. Information about when other grades resume will be made at a later date, Minister Angie Motshekga said.
Smaller special-needs institutions, and some private schools that are less crowded and better able to manage social distancing, won’t necessarily need to reopen in a phased manner that’s required at larger public schools, Minister Angie Motshekga said.
Youth Day
On 16 June 1976 more than 20 000 pupils from Soweto began a protest march. In the wake of clashes with the police, and the violence that ensued during the next few weeks, approximately 700 hundred people, many of them youths, were killed and property destroyed.
What is youth day all about?
Youth day in South Africa is a public holiday that is annually commemorated on the 16th of June. It is usually held in memory of one particular protest which culminated in a wave of simultaneous countywide protests in what came to be known as the 1976 Soweto uprising. This was a direct response to some issues in the Bantu Education Act and the 1974 government directive that Afrikaans be applied as the language of instruction for several subjects in all black schools.
4 Ways to Help Youth Realise their Potential
We have the power to support and connect with the youth, to grow their prospects, to ensure they can access real precedent setting opportunities, and ultimately change the trajectory of the whole country. There are many ways in which we can do this. Here follows four ways in which we can do it as ordinary citizens in our personal and professional capacity.
Change perceptions about the youth
There are many studies that show young people are optimistic about the future; they often try multiple strategies using lots of perseverance to get education and work. Lots of resilience in the face of significant obstacles and ongoing attempts to create new opportunities and possibilities for themselves. Young people are trying their hardest to make good lives and contribute enthusiastically to building a better country. If we can shift our perception, then we can start to take everyday actions that will build real possibility for these incredible young people.
Support young people to navigate their way through the education system
A big determinant of a young person’s success in life is their educational attainment. Young people know, and have seen, that getting a tertiary degree can pull an entire family out of poverty – and after managing to navigate through a tough and complex education system, it is a tragedy that many young people are excluded from completing tertiary education.
Create opportunities for young people to gain work experience
We could create real opportunity for one tenth of all unemployed young people each year. If NGOs, larger companies, and government departments did the same, we could easily absorb the vast majority of young people, giving them a sense of what work is, providing basic skills and foundational workplace competencies, and getting them started on their journey towards fulltime formal employment.
Mentor a young person
It’s easy to forget that one of the most valuable things you can contribute to other people is your time and your knowledge.
These are just a few of the many ways in which each one of us can engage with the young people who cross our paths daily in South Africa.
We as PROCARE are here to support you and your Family during your stay at home period. We also provide counselling via digital platforms (E.g. Skype, WhatsApp video, Zoom) as well as Telephone counselling.
For Professional Confidential Counselling contact us on 0861 776 227 or directly on our
Lockdown numbers:
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Western Cape: 082 977 4435 / 082 339 8988
Sources utilized:
https://youth.dgmt.co.za/4-ways-to-support/
https://briefly.co.za/25724-why-celebrate-youth-day-south-africa.html