The WorkFit Campaign is a non-profit initiative that supports TVET colleges and related organisations to improve youth employability. Supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, WorkFit is the last project of the Digital Jobs Africa initiative which aimed to catalyse new, sustainable employment opportunities for high-potential, disadvantaged youth. The main aim of the WorkFit Campaign is to promote the WorkFit Toolkit, a best practice resource for supply-side institutions engaging in youth employability. WorkFit offers technical support to institutions on how to apply the Toolkit to their youth employability strategy and programmes.
The WorkFit Toolkit is an interactive PDF document which is based on the best practices from a range of leading global youth employability institutions. Many of these institutions are African, including Harambee, EOH, CareerBox, Maharishi Institute (Impact Sourcing Academy) and the Mentec Foundation. Feedback from five South African Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges and three Universities was also built into the Toolkit. Any practitioner or institution developing or improving youth employability programmes can benefit from the Toolkit.
The Toolkit offers an outline on how to develop appropriate work readiness programmes by offering resources on each of the primary seven stages of a work readiness intervention. These are:
- Understanding Labour Market Information
- Partnering with employers and others
- Screening, Assessing and Profiling
- Developing Soft Skills
- Mentoring Youth
- Implement Work-based learning
- Monitoring and Evaluation.
The toolkit and other resources can also be downloaded for free from www.workfitcampus.org.za