Ecosystem Support
South Africa has thousands of organisations working to support young people, running programmes, creating opportunities, building skills, providing psychosocial support. Most of this work is real and valuable.
But much of it happens in parallel.
A young person might access skills training from one organisation, job opportunities from another, and mental health support from a third, if they can find them at all. These organisations rarely connect. Young people end up starting over, telling the same story, navigating systems that don't speak to each other.
Our ecosystem work is about making this visible, and doing something about it.
What we do:
Since 2020 we have worked alongside the Youth Development Collaboration Lab (YD Co-Lab), a national network we helped found, to map, connect and strengthen South Africa's youth development ecosystem.
This has involved:
Mapping 1,866 youth development organisations nationally across all nine provinces
Publishing four sector knowledge products including the Youth Development Ecosystem Map Report, two Ecosystem Directories and the Social Innovation Review,
Running convenings, webinars and peer learning spaces that have brought together hundreds of practitioners across Cape Town, Johannesburg and KZN
Supporting policy engagement through the DBE National Technical Working Group on Psychosocial Support, the Western Cape Youth Strategy Provincial Technical Committee, and the National Pathway Management Network
YD Co-Lab now has 191+ registered member organisations nationally.
What we have learned:
The ecosystem is active but fragmented. Collaboration depends on relationships, not systems, and those relationships take time and sustained investment to build.
There is strong willingness to work together across the sector. What is missing is the infrastructure to support it. Mapping alone is not enough. Organisations need spaces to connect, shared language to work with, and funded capacity to follow through.
Meaningful coordination cannot be an unfunded mandate.
Our publications: