organisation. Many of their members need to move on with life or need to return home to take up family responsibilities. This implies that constant training is needed. Due to the same people being used, complex youth issues are over-simplified and lead to youth issues such as diversity not being well-addressed. Youths are distrustful of organisations inviting them to attend meetings and conferences simply because it looks good to have the youth attending these. Compensation is another issue, as many youth leadership organisations expect them to work for free. Lack of financial experience to deal with donated money further complicates youth leadership issues. In South Africa we celebrate 16th June as Youth Day – a day that honours the death of hundreds of Soweto school children. This was the day that changed South Africa’s history. Today the challenges faced by the youth are crime, unemployment and poverty.


A recent Youth Leadership Summit (2011) held by the Centre for Creative Leadership expressed the need to think about youth leadership development and how best it happens and the contexts in which we expect youth to be


52 Management Today | June 2012


leading. Future focus must be on ways to reach and serve more youth with high quality leadership development opportunities. Perhaps one should be reminded that the youth of today is informative, empowered and in a position to make up their own minds as to how and what leadership constitutes of. Current leadership bestowed upon them does not leave them with trusting current leadership practices.


Young people have a critical role to play. They understand their strengths, challenges and can contribute to provide useful sustainable solutions. In a paper prepared by Janet Jobson (2011) it is recognised that young people can be powerful innovators and leaders for their communities and the broader country. Any leadership strategy that focuses on youth leadership should underline this as its basis. Nomsimilo Ramela (2011) quoted several people in an article Youth Day: Lessons from 1976 saying that the youth is central to the transformation and success of this country and the enhancement of the lives of all South Africans. The youth need to be developed, they need to be empowered. They need to remember what the previous youth did.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106