We’ve just published our 2025 Impact Report, and I’ve spent the days since sitting with what’s inside it. I want to share a few of the things it taught me, because I think they reach well beyond us.
When we started youth@WORK in 2019, none of us let ourselves picture a number like 17,155 — the young South Africans we’d placed into paid work by the close of our 2025 reporting year, with more than R773 million paid directly into their hands. Not because we didn’t believe in it. But because when you’re inside the work — one placement, one supervisor, one nervous young person walking into their very first onboarding session — you don’t really count. You just keep showing up.
And numbers like those don’t sit still. As I write this in 2026, we’ve placed 17,700 young people, paid close to R960 million in wages, and supported 4,200 youth earning an income today across a network of 977 small businesses — all while holding that same 95.6% retention rate in a country where keeping young people in employment programmes is notoriously hard. We’re within touching distance of a billion rand, and I’ll come back to what that billion actually means.
Six years in, I’ve had to sit with the counting. And here’s the honest truth: the headline numbers, striking as they are, aren’t the lesson. What changed how I think is everything underneath them.
Success at work is inseparable from success in life
We learned this the hard way, on the ground, long before we could put it in a report.
A young person who is financially stressed, emotionally unsupported or professionally isolated does not thrive in a placement, no matter how well matched they are to the role. So we stopped treating placement as the finish line and started treating it as the starting line.
That’s why our model rests on three things, not one:
- work support that keeps the placement working
- learning that keeps the young person growing, and
- wellness that keeps the human being held.
Remove any one of them and you have something ordinary. Together, in 2025 alone, that looked like 3,834 host-site visits and 32,604 telephonic wellness sessions.
One of those conversations was with a young woman who lost her baby during her placement and nearly lost everything else. Our wellness team held space for her grief and helped her find her footing again. She is not an exception. She is the reason the model is built the way it is.
The thing young people valued most surprised me
We asked our youth what y@W’s support actually gave them. I expected “a salary.” I expected “a job.”
The number one answer, by a clear margin, was: “Understanding what skills I have and what I’m good at.”
Read that again. Before the money, before the CV line, what these young people valued most was discovering their own worth. That single insight has shaped everything we do. When you help someone see what they’re capable of, confidence, goals, and hustle follow.
Nearly 99% of the youth we placed in 2025 support at least one dependent, and more than half support three or more. When their first pay cheques went overwhelmingly to groceries, family and work-ready clothing, we weren’t looking at spending habits. We were looking at whole households being lifted by one young person who was finally given a chance.
Youth don’t just get placed. They build.
The part I’m proudest of is what happens after.
Our absorption rate — youth offered permanent jobs by their host businesses — sits at 20%. That’s eight times the B-BBEE minimum. But even that undersells it, because some of the best outcomes aren’t absorption at all. They’re creation.
Litha walked into his first session looking for direction and walked out with a sense of purpose. Today his organisation, Loxion Mobile Library, has reached more than 1,500 children and earned international recognition. Wongalethu’s business had hit its growth ceiling until we helped him build a team — he now employs 14 people, seven of whom came directly through our programme.
One billion in motion
We’re closing in on R1 billion in cumulative youth wages — R960 million and counting as I write this. We will cross it, and soon.
But I’ve stopped thinking of it as a financial milestone. That billion isn’t a transfer, it’s transformation in motion. It’s groceries bought for struggling families for the first time. School fees paid by children who became breadwinners. Savings accounts opened by people who never had a reason to open one before. Businesses started. Communities changed by the presence of one young person who was supported at exactly the right moment.
And here’s the honest truth I keep coming back to: South Africa doesn’t have a youth problem. It has an infrastructure problem; a gap between the potential that exists in abundance and the structures needed to unlock it.
The good news is that the structure exists. It’s tested, it’s proven, and it’s ready to grow.
Read our full 2025 Impact Report here
To find out how to become a funder, host site or strategic partner, reach us at info@sayouthatwork.com or visit sayouthatwork.com.
