Heather Bellamy spoke with Greg Eland from Siyakholwa Development Foundation about the lives they're changing for good in South Africa.

Heather: What are unemployment rates like? Are they very high, or is it that there is employment, but it just doesn't pay well?

Welding Centre

Greg: I think currently unemployment is about 27%. In the communities that we work in, in the Eastern Cape, we are looking at 40-50% unemployment. When we initially started in Keiskammahoek, the employment rate there was about 80%.

Heather: Is there still inequality between white people and black people in South Africa, or are these figures across everybody?

Greg: It's over 20 years since South Africa discarded the apartheid regime and replaced it with a democratically elected Government. A lot has been achieved since then, but much remains still to be done to rid South Africa of some of the injustices of the apartheid past. There are still deep seated inequalities that are rooted in our past, and therefore differences still remain of wealth, education access, access to health and opportunities based on race and gender.

There's a growing black middle class that has been empowered by new conditions and has managed to transform their lives. However, I think the majority of South Africans have still to attain a decent standard of living. Most black South Africans are still poor and are still served by lower public services and institutions. I think the sad thing is that women and girls still continue to experience a subordinate position in many areas of their lives and we still have a long way to go and a lot of work still to do in this regard.

Heather: You deal with education as well don't you, so it's not just job creation?

Greg: Yes, education is a very important part of what we do. About four or five years ago we started a training arm of Siyakholwa Development Foundation called Networx Training Foundation. We're trying to empower people in a number of different skills.

We offer life skills, business entrepreneurial development, we have a technical centre where we provide welding, handy man skills, plumbing skills, and we do leadership training, farming training and we have a big focus on early childhood development as well. We've been establishing crèches and play groups and day mothers, and really trying to deal with the issue of early child development in South Africa.

Heather: What is the education system like in South Africa?

Greg: One statistic states that over three million youth are unemployed and have no access to further education and training. So the Government cannot do everything. Organisations like Siyakholwa and other organisations are critical in partnering with Government and helping contribute to solving some of these challenges that we have in regards to education and training in South Africa.

A lot of the people that we work with cannot get into further education institutions. Many of them haven't even finished school and some have never even attended school, so we have a big job. The educational side is so important, but what we're finding is we work within the community and there's also the mentoring. You can do lots of training, but unless you put that into a context, unless there's mentoring, it's not always effective. So we like walking alongside people in the context of their work, mentoring them, equipping them and just giving them hope in that way.

Heather: What does mentoring look like that makes it different from the training you do?

Greg: Mentoring is about relationship. What we're finding in different communities that we work in, is there is an absence of fathers and an absence of good family units. So our team go in and they try and spend time with people, getting to know them, starting to build relationships, and trying to see what's inside, what's their passion and dreams. So instead of just transferring knowledge and information, it's really about walking alongside people in a long-lasting type of relationship.

That's where we have really seen the difference. We've had people in our organisation that started off never having finished school and had never had a job before. They started hoeing in the fields and just through the connections, relationships, love, and the kind of mum and dad type of heart towards people, those guys have developed and advanced. We have stories now of people that are in management positions and have gone on and done incredible things.