Within South Africa a destructive post-matriculant void exists for the majority of disadvantaged young people from our full racial spectrum. It is a void composed of almost inaccessible tertiary education and massive unemployment. The tragic consequences of this void are that these young people who have such wonderful potential, are sucked into the hopeless spiral of unemployment, poverty and hopelessness. There are currently 7 million young people (18-26) in this void and the number is growing by roughly 1 million a year. This is not a statistic - It’s a crisis that threatens the very future of South Africa.
Our passion is to work with disadvantaged young people who have a deep desire to make something of their lives and the determination to make it a reality. Through our one year programme we seek to counsel their hurts, challenge their world-view, build into their lives, embolden their dreams, release their potential, and provide a personalised as well as practical 'next-step' for their vocation.
Almost every teen focussed programme in our country has tragic stories of high-quality young people, filled with hope, ability, and promise who are caught in the void. We work hand in hand with these programmes to ensure that we gain access to young people with a proven track record, and whose character traits and abilities can be vouched for. Young people who have a deep desire to make something of their lives and the determination to take all the help they can get to make it a reality.
Long-term life change can only take place through holistic life development. Thus we focus on: spiritual development, health and nutrition, emotional healing, practical lifeskills, broadening horizons, adventure activities and vocational preparedness.
We believe that when young people are mobilised to make a difference in their communities a lifelong journey of active engagement begins that will have a dramatic impact on our country.
Our students are coached to develop a generous, civic-minded spirit by actively involving them in various community projects where they learn to care for those less fortunate than themselves and see themselves as part of the solution to South Africa's needs.
‘A great river is made up of many small streams’ - African proverb
Towards the tail end of the first semester we enter our vocation enablement phase where we rely upon our knowledge of each student (developed over the previous six months) and make use of professional assessment techniques to determine what stream students should enter into for the second semester. In order to ensure that we offer a vocation solution best suited to each student we offer three main streams for them to choose from, namely: Tertiary Education, Apprenticeship, or Entrepreneur Development. Each of these streams are specifically designed to help participants achieve success within their respective vocational fields.
The ultimate aim of everything we do is to see changed young people enabled to enter bright futures!
A complete tertiary education solution.
Through the use of professional assessment tools students will be enabled to:
The aim is to have students enrolled in the correct course for them, under full scholarships and thoroughly ready for the challenges of tertiary education.
Further education is not the only path to success and is not the unemployment panacea it is made out to be, especially within the context of South Africa. Thus, students who may not be suited to, or interested in, tertiary education are encouraged to pursue our apprenticeship stream. We provide a link between our students and businesses looking for high-quality young people to develop within their company. RealStart continues to mentor the student throughout their apprenticship and keeps in regular contact with the company they are placed in.
The aim of this stream is to give students at the very least an employable skill and at best a secure job within the company they apprenticed with.
This stream takes students with an entrepreneurial ability and interest and develops their skills further to help them become fully self-employed.
The course utilises:
At the end of the year qualifying students gain access to micro-loans to help establish their business.