The Learning Lunch podcast explores ideas, approaches and social innovations – creating opportunity for non-profit organisations’ teams to discover what others are learning and space to reflect on what these insights might mean for their own strategy and programme implementation.
Youth development practitioners often focus on the supply and demand side of unemployment: greater investment in skills development and quality education on the one hand, with job creation and economic growth on the other.
However, in South Africa, a country with high rates of poverty and inequality, we often miss an important part of the conversation — the experience of poverty on a young person’s ability to identify, connect with, and hold on to opportunities.
Poverty is not just about material deprivation; it impacts every aspect of a young person’s life, including their confidence. The inner or hidden dimensions of poverty also require policy attention and investment in evidence-based interventions.
In this podcast, we explore how the inner dimensions of poverty reinforce the everyday material hardships experienced by out-of-school and unemployed young people. We talk to Simone Peinke, project lead of FETCH and Anwar Parker, Psychologist for the Year Beyond programme, about how these compounding challenges trap them in cycles of exclusion and what we can do to help them break free.
Simone Peinke is the project lead of FETCH, aimed at unlocking the potential of young people and their communities to fetch a future they aspire to. The approach builds on a proven model of connecting youth to opportunities for learning, earning and personal growth. Simone has experience working in management consulting and in the non-profit sector, where her focus has been on designing, refining and scaling programmes that support young people to effectively transition into the world of work.
Anwar Parker is a psychologist with a Master’s degree from the University of Cape Town and over 25 years of experience working in South Africa’s development sector. His career has focused on supporting children and youth, particularly those facing psychosocial challenges and living in contexts of poverty and adversity. Anwar currently leads the Ecosystem of Support Portfolio at YearBeyond, where he oversees the design and implementation of programmes that provide holistic care for young people.
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