On 2 May, the Flemish minister for Culture, Youth, Media and Sport, Sven Gatz, approved a new grant to the National Youth Development Agency. The grant goes towards the implementation of a project to promote and up-scale youth volunteering in civil society organisations in South Africa. The project seeks to cultivate an enabling environment so that youth volunteering can flourish in civil society organisations and is intended to help develop a culture of volunteering in South Africa by providing quality volunteering opportunities for young people.
The NYDA has been working on four priority areas: Capacity Building, Knowledge Generation, Marketing and Communication and Advocacy to counter the constraints currently faced by youth volunteering in civil society here in South Africa. The grant covers the period of April 2016 to March 2017, during which the project will focus on these four building blocks and, in so doing, follow on from and continue the work undertaken during previous years.