Take the first step, says head of Naspers Labs

Feeling anxious or afraid of rejection? Everyone before you has felt this way. Just take the first step, says Molefe Pule, head of Naspers Labs, which empowers young South Africans through digital skills training, mentorship and workplace opportunities.

Pule’s passion for the programmes comes from a personal place. “I remember when I went to university for the first time, one of the professors who taught me psychology identified me and gave me the keys to his office. He used to allow me to go to his office to study on weekends. He didn’t know me,” he says. “He was just somebody who appreciated my love for psychology, [and] for people. And that always stuck with me, you know, that everybody who gets somewhere in life has someone who believes in them.”

Today, that belief underpins his work at Naspers Labs.

 

While South Africa has no shortage of conferences, strategies and policy documents on youth development, Pule says Naspers Labs takes a very different approach.

“We try to make it practical. And we try to make sure that our implementing partners are people who are actually working with young people at the coalface.” In addition, Naspers Labs does not focus only on South Africa’s three main metros. “We try to get to the Northern Cape, North West, Limpopo.” For Pule, the most important point is that Naspers itself also takes on young people, enabling them to train and gain experience within the company.

“So, we’ve got a lot of young people in our team. I think at the peak this year we had close to about 12 to 15 young people who are doing different levels of internships throughout the business,” he says proudly.

Measuring success can be complicated, but several things count at Naspers Labs: who the young people emerging from the programme are, their calibre and the opportunities to which they have been exposed.

His main advice to young people at home right now is to take the first step: “You have more potential than you realise. And there are young people just like you who felt exactly how you feel right now.”

He says all the young people he has met through the programme experienced those familiar feelings of anxiety, fear of rejection and uncertainty. “The most critical thing for a young person is to take the first step. Once you take the first step and you apply, you send that email, you make contact – you will find that you will meet your peers and your whole world will open.”

Find out more at naspers.com/naspers-labs.

This post is sponsored by Naspers Labs and produced by Media24 Advertising and Content Marketing for News24.