Youth Development Policy in South Africa and its Relevance to the U.S.

A Forum — April 11, 2003

Background

Alan Zuckerman is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on youth employment policies, programs, and practices. He has been engaged with workforce and youth development for over 40 years. After earning an M.B.A. from Columbia University, he worked for federal (Department of Labor) and state governments, Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, two universities and, for eight years, led and greatly expanded the influence of the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC), increasing its annual resources ten-fold. Two of NYEC’s signal creations flow from his leadership vision: PEPNET—developing high standards for effective youth employment programs and sharing that knowledge widely, and New Leaders Academy—identifying and supporting rising staff in youth development programs.

Zuckerman recently returned from 20 months in South Africa. There he advised the non-governmental Umsobomvu Youth Development Fund on the creation of effective youth employment and development programs that can benefit from recent United States’ experience (e.g., PEPNet and the New Leaders Academy) and which can also successfully transfer knowledge that is suitable to the South African culture, economy, and institutional capacity. In this forum, Zuckerman reflected on thorny issues of cross-cultural knowledge-transfer, program implementation, institutional capacity, public will, planning in a democracy, and what can be learned in South Africa that can also be useful in advancing U.S. efforts to promote youth development and effective career preparation.

Forum Summary

Zuckerman and his wife traveled to South Africa for a variety of reasons including a fascination with the transformation that has taken place in the post-apartheid years, an interest in living and working in a different country, and to take on new challenges. While there, Zuckerman first worked for a U.S. consulting firm and later as an advisor to the Chief Operating Officer of the Umsobomvu Youth Fund.

During his time in South Africa, Zuckerman observed that young people there play a very different role in policy development than they do in the U.S. The National Youth Policy written by young people in 1997 prescribes that youth (defined as those between the ages of 14 and 35) must be engaged in the development, planning, and implementation of all youth policies and programs. This policy promotes participation of youth in the reconstruction and development of South Africa. Young people are involved in reviewing the budget of every governmental department to assess its impact on young people. Youth presence is well-organized; there are National and Provincial Commissions for youth which review policy, budgets, and programs. The political parties all have young people engaged in their activities. Most youth programs are run by young people, and young people must be involved in meetings concerning youth policies and programs. In general, youth are valued and their voices are heard. The U.S. can learn a lot from South Africa about how to integrate youth voice in public policy. When asked by the audience how the U.S. might get more youth involved in policy, Zuckerman said that the primary issue is one of will: we just need to do it—we need to ask them to become involved and to make a genuine and sustained effort to include them as we go about developing public policy.

Zuckerman also spoke about his work in South Africa as an advisor to the Chief Operating Officer for a youth-development-focused organization, the Umsobomvu Youth Fund (UYF). The mission of the Fund is to promote job creation and skills development for South African youth. The Fund is a non-governmental organization that is funded by a tax on the sale of two state-owned financial companies. It has programs in the areas of career information and counseling, skills development and transfer, youth entrepreneurship, and capacity building and research.

The head of the fund hired Zuckerman because of his work with PEPNet, which they saw as a source of valuable information. The collaboration was a wonderful learning experience for all parties; however, working across cultures and trying to transfer knowledge from one culture to another was an enormous challenge. For instance, written materials are very helpful for communicating knowledge and they are a good opening device, but they are not sufficient and they need to be adapted to the culture to which they are transferred. Yet adaptation of such materials is itself difficult. In this particular case, for example, there were cultural and language differences, different background experiences, and a lack of resources and experienced staff in the South African organization. Zuckerman also learned that in addition to issues related to knowledge transfer across cultures, it is not appropriate to just pick up a program that has been in place for 30 years in the U.S. and transfer it. Programs age and evolve over time.

Zuckerman emphasized, however, that it is possible for groups such as the one he worked with to learn from U.S. experience. To transfer knowledge across cultures, training and support for staff are essential. It is extremely difficult to communicate or explain an idea to someone who has no experience related to that idea; it is essential to create some kind of experience associated with the idea. For instance, the South Africans had no understanding of the U.S. concept of an information clearinghouse. Cross-cultural field trips are one of the most effective ways to communicate and transfer knowledge across contexts. Such trips allow people to see and feel an idea and to come to understand it. However, such trips can themselves be difficult. A one-to-two week training program is simply not enough time to allow the necessary knowledge transfer to take place; more time is needed. Yet many of the South African programs cannot afford to send their staff to the U.S. for a length of time. One way around this difficulty might be to have year-long worker exchanges between U.S. and South African organizations.

Zuckerman also described what he learned about characteristics of effective youth development programs. Such programs are run by exceptional organizations and building effective organizations takes time, training, and resources. Staff development is a necessity. Effective programs have a clear mission and focus. They are well-managed and collect and use data to measure impact and manage services. They empower youth as managers of their own development and help youth build skills and credentials that lead to a productive livelihood. Effective programs are intentional, well planned, complex, comprehensive, and they provide long-term services with follow-up.

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