Junior Achievement Africa is pleased to announce a new collaboration with LinkedIn. JA South Africa and LinkedIn are collaborating to empower South African students. JA is pairing LinkedIn staff, based in Dublin and overseeing business in Africa, with selected high school students from McAuley House School in Parktown, Johannesburg.
LinkedIn staff will mentor and coach students they consider their futures beyond academics. This will be an online-based program, which will be primarily based on one-on-one relationships between LinkedIn staff and students of JA South Africa. However, there will be some online workshops as well to impact a larger group.
The mentors from LinkedIn will deliver program based on JA’s Success Skills Program, supplementing it with other resources available in LinkedIn’s extensive platform. JA Success Skills focuses on developing students’ interpersonal effectiveness, enabling them to identify the strengths and unique potentials of their interpersonal skills. Students get to conduct practice job interviews and begin to work on skills portfolios that they can carry with them into the work force when seeking employment. From their mentors they will learn how to communicate effectively, build rapport, influence others, work in teams, present themselves and develop other soft skills that are critical to success.
“We are excited to work with LinkedIn on this initiative,” says Elizabeth Bintliff, the CEO of JA Africa. “Our students are getting world-class mentorship and access to very high resources from highly qualified professionals and that adds tremendous value to their readiness for the world of work.”
JA’s mission of economic empowerment of youth overlaps with LinkedIn’s mission to connect the world’s professionals to enable them to be more productive and successful.
The program is part of LinkedIn’s monthly InDay, during which employees come together to invest in themselves and whatever inspires them: exploring new ideas or volunteering for special causes.
It intersects with JA’s model, which is heavily dependent on corporate volunteerism to deliver learning.
The program launches on June 16.
