Latest news with #HigherHealth
eNCA
27-06-2025
- Health
- eNCA
Training programme aims to tackle youth unemployment
JOHANNESBURG - As Youth Month draws to a close, the focus shifts from remembering 1976 to addressing the harsh realities faced by young people. With rising unemployment, gender-based violence and digital exclusion on the rise experts say South Africa must invest in more than just hard skills. A groundbreaking programme launched by Higher Health is doing just that, arming young people with civic values and the soft skills needed to succeed in the modern world.
Gulf Today
04-05-2025
- Business
- Gulf Today
I went to Gen Z bootcamp to find out if we need reforming
A video of Morgan Freeman appears on my screen. 'What you see is not real,' he says in his deep Tennessee drawl from a darkened room. 'What if I were to tell you that I'm not even a human being?' It takes me a minute to adjust. Is Morgan doing OK? I notice he's not blinking; his head's not moving. Ah a deepfake. I'm watching this clip as part of the UK's first life-skills curriculum, which is being rolled out to thousands of Gen Z students in Greater Manchester. They will learn essential tools including empathy, time management, challenging prejudice, financial literacy, and spotting misinformation online. The Unesco-partnered non-profit Higher Health has launched the nine-module programme to address a gap in soft skills among those aged 16 to 25, with plans for a nationwide expansion across different education providers such as sixth form colleges, young offender institutions, apprenticeships hubs, and graduate employment settings (it aims to reach 10,000 young people by September). While I'm not actually one of the participants (I've been given access to the materials for this article), I am part of its target age group, and I can completely see the benefits. The course has been launched at a time when there is public concern about the future of my generation and how we will adapt to the workplace, especially since Gen Z is expected to make up about 27 per cent of the UK's workforce this year. Our negative reputation often precedes us: we're represented in the media as a lazy, anxious and workshy generation, more snowflake than the millennials. What's more, employers seem to be bracing themselves for our apparent ineptness: the accountancy firm Forvis Mazars recently launched a social skills course to teach Gen Z lessons on 'picking up the phone', which included simulations of client meetings. From my perspective, it feels as though there's a growing moral panic surrounding my generation, as if we require reform or an overhaul. But are we really broken? So doomed that we need to roll out another curriculum, on top of our 14 years of compulsory school education, to ensure that we are compassionate, socially informed, and ready for the real adult world? Really so hopeless that we have to sit through hours of instruction on self-care? It does seem to be a rite of passage that the 'lazy' and 'anxious' labels are levied at the youngest adults joining the workforce (just look at how millennials were gawped at not that long ago). Resorting to clichés about the younger generation, rather than trying to understand them better, is easy. But if we ignore the realities of the circumstances in which Gen Z has emerged into the world, then we will be looking away from a unique set of challenges that might explain why we're perceived so abnormally. Professor Sandeep Ranote, a leading child psychiatrist who worked on developing the curriculum alongside Higher Health, has seen how those born between 1997 and 2012 — known as Gen Z — have grown up in an unstable world that has left them lacking some key social skills. She has developed what she calls the 'five Cs' (Covid-19, climate change, cost-of-living, cyberspace and conflict) to represent the unique circumstances that the generation has lived through. 'I'm calling the programme pre-prevention, because it's giving young people a broader toolkit and skills for life at a really important transition time, between the ages of 16 and 25, since our brains are still developing until at least the age of 25,' she says. Higher Health's research has surveyed where Gen Z are struggling to adapt to the workplace, and communication is at the top of that list. 'What we're seeing is young people struggling with communication skills, over the phone or face-to-face, managing their own emotions, and managing relationships between peers and superiors — whatever workplace you're in, if it's retail, health or finance.' The nine modules, which cover topics from gender equality to staying safe, money management and climate understanding, will be delivered through a mixture of peer-to-peer and online learning, with digital forums available for collective reflection. The course, while aiming to equip young people with skills for the working world, doesn't shy away from mental health, either, with modules built around meditation and mindfulness. One scenario in the empathy module asks you to reflect on your reaction when a friend announces that their partner has broken up with them. It feels like ample training for 16-year-olds who publicise their breakups on social media in real time. I wonder whether some of the older participants might find this sort of training rudimentary, though. Another role-play situation asks you to show how you'd confront a friend who was sharing inappropriate pictures, which is something I know my teenage Facebook-obsessed self could have benefited from.
The Citizen
03-05-2025
- Business
- The Citizen
Career Day at Westcol brings newfound hope
Westcol Westonaria recently celebrated Career Day with a notable event where various stakeholders and students spoke about the importance of careers. • Also read: Westcol offers guidance on career paths Some of the stakeholders who attended the event include Merseta, SKLE Solutions, the Department of Labour, Goldfields Mine, Higher Health, campus management and peer educators. Student Sthembiso Khanya Lehlohonolo Mbeje shared a motivational speech about his career. He described himself as a young professional who is passionate about technology. He stated he is a qualified cybersecurity analyst and auditor, having completed training through Cisco. He is also the founder of S-Tech Innovations, which is a digital startup that provides services such as app and website development. 'Beyond tech, I am honoured to serve as a Peer Ambassador for Higher Health, where I promote mental wellness, gender equality, and holistic student development. I believe that for us to succeed in our careers, we must also be well in mind, body, and spirit,' he explained. 'Career Day is not just a date on our academic calendar. It's a moment of reflection and direction – a day where we remind ourselves that our dreams are valid, and that our futures are shaped by the actions we take today. Career Day is a reminder that no career is too small or too big – it is about choosing a path that aligns with who you are and what you want to contribute to the world. Whether you dream of becoming a doctor, developer, artist, engineer, entrepreneur, or teacher, today is a chance to explore, ask and to begin,' he said. He continued that dedication and believing in oneself will ensure that your dream career is well within reach. Electrical Engineering student at Western TVET College, Makgotla Katlego, also shared his thoughts on Career Day. 'Pursuing engineering has always been my dream, inspired by my late grandfather, a boilermaker whose presence brought joy, peace, and unity to our family. His legacy has driven my passion for this field, where scientific and mathematical principles come together to design, build, and maintain systems that improve lives,' Makgotla expressed. He added that engineering is not just a course, but a way to honour his grandfather's memory. Throughout his studies, Makgotla developed a particular interest in Industrial Electronics and discovered a course in Industrial Engineering. His goal is to acquire more skills in this field. I believe that delayed dreams aren't denied dreams, and with perseverance and dedication, I'm confident I'll achieve my goals,' he concluded. At Caxton, we employ humans to generate daily fresh news, not AI intervention. Happy reading!
New European
25-04-2025
- Business
- New European
Gen Z's problems are all our fault
We are, however, old news now. We have kids and mortgages, and those of us who have neither can still buy wine without having to even consider getting our ID out first. We're yesterday's kids, and my hangovers won't let me forget it. The new wave of unruly, useless children is Gen Z – the people born, roughly, between 1996 and 2012. Ah, the youths. The youths! What are they doing right? What aren't they doing wrong? Around five minutes ago, as far as I can remember, we millennials were the ones being chastised by the media, day in, day out. We killed mayonnaise and we killed diamonds; we killed the lunch break and we killed department stores. It's honestly amazing to think that the world still looks broadly the same today, given how hard we worked to destroy everything. Some of them have now been in full-time work for over a decade; others are just about becoming teenagers. Still, they apparently have one thing in common: they just can't hack it. 'It', in this context, is grown-up life. It's empathy, time management, picking up the phone, being able to be both pleasant and competent during work meetings, all that jazz. These 'digital natives', as we're calling them, simply aren't cut out for anything that doesn't involve sitting in a corner, glued to their phone, endlessly scrolling on TikTok. Well, I exaggerate, but only slightly. Earlier this week, Greater Manchester launched Skills 4 Living, an initiative backed by Unesco-partner non-profit Higher Health, and aiming to reach 10,000 young people in the city region by September. The programme, which has teamed up with, among others, the University of Manchester, the University of Salford and Manchester Metropolitan University, will teach them 'soft skills' and 'everyday but essential' tools. They aren't the only ones seeking to address those issues. Last month, accountancy firm Forvis Mazars launched a course for Gen Zers, hoping to teach them how to, effectively, behave in an office job. Now, if this were the Daily Telegraph, I should be taking a sharp turn and spending the rest of this column berating those unruly, unsightly, feral youths. How hard can it be to pick up a phone and talk to someone? Do you really need a course to learn how to chat to your colleagues around a desk? Hell, how can any semi-cognisant 25-year-old not manage the ancient and noble art of 'being broadly on time for work every morning'? If I'm honest, some part of me does want to ask those questions. I graduated at 21, not too long ago, and I learnt how to do those things reasonably seamlessly. I really wasn't a well-polished young woman then, and it's fair to say that newsrooms aren't the most welcoming of environments. If I made it then surely, surely, they can too. This would be an easy piece to write, but I fear it would ultimately be quite unsatisfactory. We can whine and complain about Gen Z all we want, but everyone's a product of their environment. If we want to understand why so many kids are finding it so hard to become adults and, more importantly, ensure that future generations don't suffer the same fate, we ought to be asking ourselves what went wrong. Of course, some answers will be both unavoidable and (hopefully) unreplicable, like the Covid lockdowns, but that's not the whole answer. Similarly, it is true that the generation below mine was the first to truly grow up in a fully online world, but that doesn't mean we should shrug and accept that as a fact of life. If smartphones and social media cripple young people's ability to engage with the world, both schooling and parenting should change and evolve to adapt to circumstances. It also seems worth asking whether older and more senior employees clamouring to work from home may partially be to blame. Offices are meant to be the place where graduates learn all those skills they will use for the rest of their careers. What happens if all the people who would have once taught them, either actively or merely by being there and doing the work, now insist on living it up in their spare room? It takes a village to raise a child, and a society to turn those children into adults. We may not like to admit it, but the shortcomings of this new generation are merely our own.
Times
23-04-2025
- Business
- Times
What Gen Z really need to know
Gen Z might be digital natives, but it turns out that we digi-dinosaurs actually have something to teach them about the latest smartphones: how to answer them. That's one of the 'soft skills' that under-25s, many of whom are entering the workforce for the first time, lack, and it's holding them back. Eighty-five per cent of job success can be traced back to these soft skills, according to the non-profit Higher Health, whose Skills4Living pilot scheme will fill in the gaps. Some 10,000 students from three of Manchester's universities will be taught empathy, active listening, conflict resolution and time management. Meanwhile, the accountancy firm Forvis Mazars, which has 14 offices across Britain, has announced a new course in social skills for its Gen Z employees,
