The Optentia research focus area on the North-West University’s (NWU’s) campus in Vanderbijlpark and KU Leuven in Belgium, with the financial backing of the Flemish Interuniversity Board, have been investigating the experiences of unemployed people in townships in South Africa for the last five years.

As the project draws closer to reaching a conclusion, Optentia will be hosting a symposium on unemployment on 13 and 14 September 2018.

Unemployment remains one of the most significant challenges facing South Africa. It hinders the achievement of South Africa’s two key strategic objectives: eliminating poverty and reducing inequality.

Unemployment has detrimental consequences. At macro level, the inactivity of many workers reduces the potential for economic growth. At the meso level, low-income households are heavily burdened, as the unemployed have to support many dependants.

Champions against unemployment. From left are Melinda du Toit (student), Dr Leoni van der Vaart (graduate), Rachele Paver, Prof Roland Blonk (visiting expert in unemployment), and Prof Ian Rothmann (Director: Optentia).

 

The overall aim of this project was to advance the knowledge on the experience of unemployment in South Africa. From a developmental perspective, it aimed to develop and evaluate an evidence-based intervention which can alleviate unemployed individuals’ burden and foster their adaptive orientation towards the labour market via enhanced well-being, and in the process actually enhancing well-being.

To sustainably support evidence-based interventions, the second development goal of this project was to enhance research capacity and stimulate scholars to do research in general but also on unemployment in particular.

More about the conference
The symposium will take place at the Emerald Conference Centre in Vanderbijlpark on 13 and 14 September. It will aim to disseminate the findings of various research projects regarding the experiences, motivation and behaviour of unemployed people in townships in South Africa. It will offer an opportunity to report on interventions which aims to deal with unemployment and identify challenges and opportunities for researchers, practitioners and students working with unemployment and unemployed people. The symposium will also offer the ideal place to build multi-disciplinary networks of researchers, policymakers and practitioners to tackle the challenges associated with unemployment.

The R500 registration fee includes attendance of all sessions, hand-outs, materials and refreshments. A limited number of sponsorships for attendance are available for students and community leaders.

Please contact Marinda Malan (marinda.malan@nwu.ac.za) for more information.