In terms of contributing to the specific national skills development objectives, Project Naledi was conceived with two components, namely: Bursary and Internship Scheme

Project Naledi

TCTA launched Project Naledi in 2005 with the expressed aim of recruiting, funding and employing youths from previously disadvantaged areas, with particular focus on rural areas. This was contrived as a contribution to the government’s transformation agenda of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA), the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) and the National Human Resource Strategy. The JIPSA framework broadly identified developing scarce skills in the following high priority areas:

• Engineering and planning skills for jobs in transport, communications and energy;
• Engineering projects for cities and towns, to meet the needs of municipalities;
• Management and planning skills in education, health and municipalities.

The project intends to:

• Identify deserving and capable students from disadvantaged communities;
• Recruit candidates into engineering, project management, finance and accounting disciplines;
• Support the candidates throughout their studies by providing academic tutoring and mentoring;
• Provide specific and on-going support to the students that enter into accounting and engineering fields through regular follow-upsessions; and
• Develop a model for increasing participation of youth into the scarce skills category.