In February this year, I flew to Cape Town to meet up with our partner and dear friend Cheryl Harper, founder of WeCanChangeOurWorld. She and I paid a visit to Philippi, a poverty-stricken township teeming with youth in need of guidance and support.
We met with Hope Africa to explore ways in which the Resolute Foundation can make a positive impact in the community. And one way to do that is through resources.
Community centres, laptops, internet access… Resources like these can empower youth by creating opportunities for them to learn engineering and software development, helping them to use their time constructively and gain practical skills.
Seeing passionate NPOs work together in close collaboration, and small businesses giving back to the community, was nothing short of inspiring.
Cheryl Harper is a great supporter of the Resolute Foundation. She values teaching Coding and Robotics to our youth, especially to the disadvantaged youth in townships rife with unemployment, gangsterism and substance abuse.
Cheryl has a few thoughts…
“I have seen ex-offenders and school dropouts learn coding and robotics and soon become role models, finding jobs with huge salaries, which have turned their lives around. This is because artificial intelligence creates great job opportunities for trained coders and robotics graduates. The demand is already there and will only become greater. We need to educate our youth for positions where there will be demand for their services.
We recently took Kamohelo Makwela from the Resolute Foundation to Philippi on the Cape Flats to visit some Youth Development NGOs, and were very well received. We will soon have another workshop and include more organisations who can then introduce Coding & Robotics to their curriculums to uplift disadvantaged youth at grass roots level.
Coding and robotics can turn our youth unemployment crisis around.
