As South Africa seeks to recover from the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, corruption, and more, and with youth unemployment at a high of 66.5 percent, marketing technology firm Black Wolf Youth Agency has turned to helping young people entering the labour market.
This includes increasing the skills of students entering the workforce, promoting entrepreneurship and empowering the country’s future leaders by giving them a solid foundation for working life.
Students were also able to volunteer to be upskilled in digital marketing within a work environment.
Marketing technology firm Black Wolf Youth Group said that it had dedicated the past four years to youth development and training with their Black Wolf Youth Agency, a non-profit division within the company.
Officially founded in 2020, Black Wolf Youth Agency is the official strategic partner to the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), specifically within the institution’s marketing and work-integrated learning department. The agency operates as an education solutions hub, providing training, mentorship, and placement to university students and graduates from across the country.
In collaboration with CPUT, it has recently launched its marketing society, which exposes students to industry leaders through online and offline events. The recent launch of the marketing society has seen more than 170 students receive guidance and insight on their career paths.
Sven Wolf, a director at Black Wolf Group, said unemployment had risen steadily over the past few years and the micro and small business sector provided a great foundational incubator for skills training.
“We are not unaware of the many barriers of entry to the workforce, especially in larger corporates, which is why all our programmes support the learning journey with a focus on training and development within the marketing discipline,” Wolf said.
The youth agency offers programmes in work readiness, where it partners with universities and businesses to provide brand marketing challenges that form part of the curriculum and are assessed for marks; learning management systems in partnership with human resource departments, where youth are taught culturally relevant learning techniques that can be used across scalable online training platforms; and training and mentoring for graduates, who are given opportunities to service real clients.
The agency furthermore has partnered with industry professionals to provide free coding classes for young marketers interested in expanding their 4IR (Fourth Industrial Revolution) skills.
Prompted by the impacts of Covid-19, the non-profit says it has assisted in upskilling 120 students annually since 2020 through digital learning applications, with 11 students receiving placements at Black Wolf after the completion of the programme.
“As more and more youth find it difficult to secure work, Black Wolf Youth Agency’s programmes aim to meet the government’s goal of bringing more people into the mainstream economy through skills training that, while focused on marketing, are sought after by South African and global employers,” Wolf said.
The agency currently counts PRIMI, Reebok, and TEDxCapeTown as partners in this initiative, and openly sought further collaboration with like-minded organisations and brands looking to address the youth unemployment crisis head-on and bridge the gap between skills training and experience.
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