Only a concerted effort, integrating all the resources of South Africa,will make it possible for us to overcome the daunting challenge presented by the current unemployment crisis in South Africa. Read more.
With this in mind, SLOT has continued to be a pro-active role player by networking with partners such as the Youth Development Network (YDN), a national grouping of seven youth focused NGO's. This is the brain child of the Royal Netherlands Embassy who have been the driving force behind its growth. SLOT is one of the founder members. The YDN has become an important mouth piece for the youth of South Africa. They have a set of principles that are key to youth development which we look to as our standard of "good practice".
Young people have gifts and talents that should be identified and built upon
Young people have a range of needs (social, health, spiritual, psychological, education. economic, etc.) which are interrelated.
Young women and young men have similar and different needs
Youth programs should be rooted in communities and in broader society
Young people should be given opportunities to practise what they have learnt
Young people are partners, not recipents, in their own development
Young people should be given opportunities to enhance their leadership skills
WCA Alliance
SLOT has a meaningful alliance with World Changers Academy who were founded in August 2002 by Sizwe Mthembu (a pastor, former teacher and businessman from northern KwaZulu Natal) and Joe White (an American who lived for five years in KwaNyuswa, a semi-rural Zulu community near Durban, doing community empowerment work). As a result of their diverse experiences with community work, Sizwe and Joe both come to realise that individual empowerment had to be based on a combination of social, spiritual and economic efforts in one holistic project, and thus they decided to found World Changers Academy. In August of 2002, the first program started with a 3 month Life Skills empowerment course for 100 unemployed youth. Since then, many thousands have been trained through hundreds of courses in over 40 different communities. Their mission to change the minds, hearts and spirits of people for life success is very close to the heart of what we do at SLOT and we embarked on this successful alliance in 2008. (please see here for more information on WCA)
