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AVA’s situation July 2015:ContentsYouth Unemployment Overview – The context for AVA:AVA VisionMission StatementAVA’s theory of changeStrategy for 2015AVA Core Programme Year Beyond IETI pilot programmeEdupeg pilot programmeStaffingCore AVA staffYear Beyond Programme StaffFunding.Risks and BenefitsMonitoring and Evaluation FrameworkYouth Unemployment Overview – The context for AVA:South Africa has one of the highest levels of youth unemployment in the Southern African region. Youth are?almost twice as likely?to be unemployed than their elders, partly because of a mismatch between their skills and what is required for available employment opportunities. Even young people with a university education cannot find work and firms report 600,000 vacancies, while 800,000 young university graduates are unemployed.Young unemployed people living in the townships find it difficult to access opportunities – travelling the long distances into the cities is expensive and many find themselves without the means to do this. Government needs to encourage job-focused training to help these growing millions of young unemployed people but our employment schemes are generally not aimed at developing youth and getting them working – most public employment programmes have poverty alleviation as their immediate goal and act as safety-nets rather than skills development programmes. So youth unemployment in South Africa is a growing problem which needs urgent attention.Young people often live with siblings or other relatives – in a city like Cape Town young people come here to finish their schooling and work and their relatives and parents are far away. They don’t have support or working role models and often live in child-headed households. There is no social security to assist unemployed people to find employment, no tertiary education assistance schemes and students who do manage to get bursaries often find themselves unable to feed or house themselves while studying. So young people are losing hope – they either isolate themselves or are enticed to join the growing number of gangs that terrorise the townships dealing in drugs and perpetrating crimes. Life is cheap.AVA VisionAVA’s vision is a South Africa where unemployed youth willing to take responsibility for shaping their own future can access a 6-month to 1-year volunteering opportunity in order to gain the skills and experience necessary to start their journey to a successful working life and at the same time make a contribution to society.Mission StatementAction Volunteers Africa (AVA) is an NGO set up to foster a volunteering culture among South African unemployed youth by placing them into 6-12 month postings in a variety of NGOs and small businesses. AVA’s NGOs and small business partners create structured working opportunities for the volunteers, enabling them to develop skills and gain practical experience. Volunteers gain social inclusion while increasing the capacity of the AVA host organisations at the same time.During its first 2 years of operation AVA had a great impact on the 112 young people who went through the programme. In 2013 over 90% and in 2014 over 80% secured further opportunities and many are firmly on the path towards study and sustainable careers. The AVA project has also had a positive impact on the capacity of some of our host organisations, both NGOs and small businesses, allowing them to expand their operations at no extra cost. AVA has also played an active role in advocating for the large scale use of volunteering to address our growing youth unemployment.AVA’s theory of changeThe easiest change to measure is the progression of youth once they have completed?the AVA programme. Following their exit, AVA contacts the alumni?several times during the subsequent year. Volunteers develop strong relationships among themselves and with the AVA staff, which ensures good contact?and information regarding?their progress. Change in the circumstances of volunteers and their families are more difficult to measure. However, we have accumulated a wealth of anecdotal evidence suggesting?that activating and motivating a young person to volunteer has a positive effect on the whole family. Many recruits have been able to take on more responsibility at home, adding to the family resources by managing their small stipends and generally having a more positive attitude. We are trialling a psychometric test designed to show the change in the recruits' locus of control and qualities such as trust, compassion, ability to cope with conflict etc. We intend to present findings from the 2014 programme?in the near future.The effect of the programme on host NGOs can be quantified in terms of the number of volunteering hours contributed by AVA recruits over a year and also by the financial contribution to the host NGOs. In addition, qualitative feedback is provided by the host NGOs and their willingness to receive more volunteers.Finally, by measuring the growth of our brand, and our inclusion into the field of youth development, AVA can measure the impact on advocacy for youth volunteering as a means to connect youth to opportunity.Strategy for 2015AVA Core Programme AVA’s strategy for 2015, our third year of operation, involves continuing with the core AVA programme– aiming for a total of 60 volunteers. Since we are embarking on other programmes and have changed venue and are poised to grow this seems realistic. So far this year we have put already 65 volunteers through the traditional AVA training and placed them in 18 NGOs and small businesses. Of these 15 have already progressed to other opportunities and 2 have left for personal reasons. AVA has also begun offering a volunteer placement and management service to other organisations and programmes. We started this way of operating last year with the pilot programme for Year Beyond where we placed 20 volunteers into 4 schools to run a homework support programme and this year we are managing 84 volunteers on the Yebo programme. We are also running a pilot programme of 17 volunteers in partnership with IETI, a training company that works with cognitively challenged youth. We are also running a small 6 month pilot specialized school programme placing 20 volunteers in 3 primary schools in Gugulethu in partnership with Edupeg. These partnerships are either wholly or largely funded by the contracting partners. Year Beyond We intend to continue as the implementing agent for Year Beyond, the flagship programme of the Western Cape government. We have 84 active volunteers on the programme. AVA has designed and implemented an innovative weekly self-development course and is responsible for managing the relationships and finances with the various partners and stakeholders. While AVA is currently steering the programme, building the team and developing structures to ensure smooth implementation it is clear that it is imperative to find a Year Beyond senior programme manager to take over many of these functions so that the AVA director can step back into more of an oversight and guiding capacity. As soon as funding is secured for this we will start recruiting for this person – government is aware of the need and will assist in accessing further funding for this. We are actively seeking another funding partner to come on board with this assistance. IETI pilot programmeWe have 19 volunteers on the IETI pilot programme, providing 19 cognitively challenged youth with the opportunity to gain 6 months working experience in a variety of NGOs. AVA is partially funding this pilot, contributing to some of the host NGO subsidies and the training and mentoring. IETI is providing the volunteer stipends, 50% of the host NGO subsidies and the salary of the intern for the duration of the project. This initiative is underway and while there are still quite a few teething problems, the majority of the young people are volunteering regularly and providing value at the host NGOs they have been assigned to as well as building their self confidence in a way they never have before.Edupeg pilot programmeThis initiative is with an educational NGO called Edupeg, placing 18 youth into 3 schools in Gugulethu to run a literacy programme in the mornings and a homework support programme in the afternoons. AVA is being contracted by Edupeg and is partnering with Shine, our literacy partner on Year Beyond, to implement the programme. The funding for this programme is being provided by Edupeg. AVA will be responsible for the recruitment, training, ongoing support, development and management of the volunteers. The training for this programme will start in July this year, while the Year Beyond volunteers are either on holiday or running their winter programme.StaffingAVA is still running below capacity and there are two programme manager positions that need to be filled (one for AVA immediately and one for Yebo as soon as some funding becomes available.) Core AVA staffDirector – Lisa Project Manager (vacant – to be appointed as soon as possible)Project Coordinator – Tanya3-4 interns ( 2 for the core AVA programme, 1 for the IETI partnership and 1 for the Edupeg programme)Year Beyond Programme StaffPart time director (temporary) – LisaProject/Operations Manager (vacant) – to be appointed as soon as funding is availableFinance/Administration Coordinator – BaveenaSenior Project Coordinator – JenSchools Coordinator – RoniPrimary Schools Coordinator – AmaniinternsFundingAVA core funding for 2015 is made up of the last R400 000 grant from Discovery and an R850 000 grant from DGMT (another R600 000 has been approved from DGMT for next year). It looks very likely that we will be granted further funding: we have also heard that we have received a grant of R180 000 from the Learning Trust and we have also just heard that Airports Company South Africa has approved AVA for long term funding but we have no idea what this means and will only find out some time during May.Once the Project Manager is in place our aim is to get started on a firm fundraising drive, getting AVA’s story out there, our website and social media jacked up and beginning the launch of the Patrons of AVA (PAVA) initiative. (The Learning Trust has expressed interest in funding the set-up of this as a social enterprise)We have received 50 stipends from the EPWP, via the NYDA, via Gold via Khulisa. They originally gave us 40 stipends of R1500 per month for 2 months with an intention for the money to roll over for the rest of the year. It has been a disaster, they paid very late (still haven’t paid a lot of the money owed) and this compromised our programme as these youth simply cannot make it to their volunteering postings without the stipends and we have had to cover their costs during this period. We have however accepted these 50 as Government stipends do make AVA so much more sustainable and I feel if we don’t get them we need to relook at how we work and maybe just become a volunteer management implementing agent for other programmes. Monitoring and Evaluation FrameworkThis is very basic, it is the one sent to DG Murray Trust for last year but the Learning Trust is going to take AVA through a formal theory of change M&E process – so it should start to look better soon.LEVEL OF EFFECTOUTPUTSOUTCOMESPolicyRaise awareness of volunteering as a tool for employment of south Africa youth by presenting papers at youth development and volunteering conferences as well as having newspaper articles published in mainstream press.Last year we presented a paper at an international volunteering conference in Australia and made a presentation at a local youth development conference. We had three articles published in mainstream press and were interviewed on two radio shows.SystemsCreate concrete partnerships with relevant stakeholders and government departments Establish a system for tracking volunteersWe have developed a relationship with a variety of host NGOs and government departments including the department of Public Works through the non-state sector EPWP division as well as relationships with a number of Western Cape Provincial Departments including the Department of the Premier, Education, Arts Sport and Culture. Our system of tracking volunteers still relies on building an alumnus which we do through phone, whatapp, facebook etc. SocialWe ran a total of 6 weeks of training and held over 20 monthly motivation forums with the three clusters of recruits we worked with last year.Support recruits self-awareness, confidence and sense of social connection through our unique self-development training and monthly motivation forums IndividualPlace 50-60 out-of-school youth into host NGOs and SMMEs. Assist in future work opportunities. We placed 78 youth into volunteering positions in approximately 18 host organisations. Over 80% of these have either gone on to other working or internship opportunities or are studying fulltime. ................
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