2. Background South Africa had a serious challenge of a high unemployment rate especially among young people between the ages of 18 - 24. It was estimated that 2.8 million young people of this age group were neither in school, training or partaking in any form of employment and, 2 million of them had no school leaving qualification. One of the reasons attributed to high unemployment among the youth was the lack of skills relevant to the labour market. This posed a considerable constraint on the country's social and economic development.