Two and a half years of dedicated mentoring by Wildlands staff, has seen the incubation of fifty “pioneers”, young people from previously disadvantaged backgrounds launching their careers in the environmental sector. Forty four of these have secured employment, thirty three within Wildlands and eleven into jobs elsewhere, in the sector and beyond.
In May 2013 Wildlands, in Hilton, KwaZulu-Natal was allocated 38 interns, dubbed “pioneers”, who were part of the Groen Sebenza Internship Programme, funded by National Treasury and co-ordinated by SANBI (South African National Biodiversity Institute). The aim of this National job creation and youth development programme was to focus on increasing some of the scarce skills in the Environmental Sector, through an extended, two and a half year internship.
Wildlands was selected as one of the “host institutions”, and has successfully incubated fifty pioneers which included Geographers, GIS specialists, Ecologists, Horticulturists, Assistant Project Managers, Community Development Workers, and others.
During this time, under the guidance of their respective Wildlands mentors, the pioneers received substantial training and work exposure with an emphasis on building their understanding of professionalism, and developing life skills, leadership skills and job-specific skills needed in the workplace. This has seen them grow in both confidence and ability, and they have become valuable members of the Wildlands staff.
Of the fifty pioneers Wildlands have incubated, eleven have found jobs elsewhere; at the likes of PWC and the Department of Environmental Affairs, seven pioneers were scooped up early into key positions in Wildlands’ communications and project teams, and the NPO has offered further employment to another fourteen pioneers whose internship contracts are about to expire. The remaining interns will complete their contracts in December 2015, of which a further twelve will be recruited by the organisation.
Simone Dale, Wildlands Groen Sebenza Project Co-ordinator is delighted with the success of the programme and commented on the contribution of mentorship to this success: “Mentoring requires time and patience, and is essentially an investment in our future; small sacrifices now, that lead to a more capable, confident workforce down the line. It has been challenging at times for the mentors as they all have demanding jobs, however their dedication to providing our pioneers with on-the-job experience and guidance has been remarkable and the results have proved their efforts worthwhile!”
Executive Director, Dr Roelie Kloppers, also commented that the organisational drive to employ as many Pioneers as possible was part of Wildlands commitment to youth development in this country and to the development of the environmental sector as a whole. “Building the capacity of youth in this country really needs to be a priority and it’s programmes like this, that offer alternative, more practical forms of learning that we believe will enable the development of effective leaders for sustainability.”
WILDTRUST (registered as the Wildlands Conservation Trust - IT No: 4329/1991/PMB)