July 2017 - MIET AFRICA

What about the vulnerable boy child?

Download: What about the vulnerable boy child?

As SADC’s implementing partner for CSTL, MIET AFRICA is increasingly aware of the paucity of support for boys and young men as compared for that of vulnerable girls and young women.

The paper highlights the vulnerability of boys and young men, and argues that engaging them in a more holistic approach to gender equality, and addressing their own specific vulnerabilities, has the potential to benefit both boys and girls. It concludes with recommendations for strengthening support for boys and young men within the CSTL framework.

World Youth Skills Day: 15 July

Young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society’s margins, all of us will be impoverished. KOFI ANNAN

World Youth Skills Day comes almost exactly a month after South Africa’s Youth Day, which commemorates the sacrifices made by the students of 1976 in standing up against the Apartheid regime. Designated by the UN General Assembly in 2014, World Youth Skills Day serves to highlight the importance of youth skills development, surely one of the most pressing of the challenges of the twenty-first century.

As the UN notes (see www.un.org/en/events/youthskillsday/), “Young people are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and [are] continuously exposed to lower quality of jobs, greater labor market inequalities, and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions.” These challenges are compounded for young women,

Addressing Barriers to Learning through Innovative Learning Environments

Download: Innovative Learning Environments

MIET AFRICA’s Innovative Learning Environments project, implemented in three schools in KZN, South Africa, devised and trialled a range of innovative strategies to improve learning outcomes of seriously underachieving learners. The use of electronic devices proved to be a particularly powerful strategy for learning mathematics, especially when their use was paired with tuition and support by mentor learners.