The National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) invites young people to get in touch with its branches located in all the nine provinces to access the relevant career guidance and skills development information.
This follows a visit that was planned by NYDA Executives and the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) to the University of Johannesburg (UJ) today.
The visit was aimed at interacting with university hopefuls who were expected to still be present in the vicinity of the University with the hope of still getting admitted.
“Upon arrival at the Bunting Road Campus we discovered that only students who have been provisionally accepted by the University have been allowed to queue at the University entrance, resulting in a number of other hopefuls opting to leave,” says NYDA CEO Steven Ngubeni.
“The purpose of today’s visit was to carry out walk‐abouts, handing out resources in the form of pamphlets, booklets and flyers encouraging the overwhelmed and disheartened youth not to give up.
"This would include motivating the university hopefuls and share with them alternative options towards improving their lives including enrolling at further education and training (FET) colleges,” says Ngubeni.
The University Registrar at UJ also felt that organisations trying to assist young people with information should rather arrange to come to campus after the completion of registration, when the situation at the University has come to normal.
During the visit the NYDA also aimed to share information on its product and services offering that includes access to career guidance, life skills training, job preparedness training, counselling services, jobs database and matching service, National Youth Service, access to finance through business loans, entrepreneurship development programme to name but a few.
The planned visit followed an unfortunate incident that took place at the UJ campus yesterday, where thousands of university hopefuls allegedly forced their way into the university entrance in a desperate attempt to submit late applications causing a stampede that led to the reported death of an accompanying parent and injury to scores of youth.
The NYDA views education as a critical component towards ensuring the overall development of young people and therefore believes that young people must be assisted with all means necessary to access quality higher education and other viable options to help improve their chances of employment.
In due course the NYDA will also announce two campaigns, namely Start Here Campaign (a career guidance campaign) and the Senior Certificate Second Chance Matric Revision Programme aimed at further assisting matriculants.
