The aims of the Spirit of Youth programme include the following:

• To help bright ambitious young leaders make their voices heard;
• To facilitate participants’ impacting at a higher than average level on their immediate peers and on society at large;
• To build a new generation of leaders who see beyond class, race and divisions to build a broadly prosperous country; and
• To provide leaders who make a difference in the world.

Spirit of Youth is a leadership programme more than anything else, and its primary objective is to address South Africa’s leadership vacuum. Interim aims along the way were for individual programme participants to develop personal leadership, whereby they are able to acquire life skills that they can use in their schools and communities. .

Participants are given opportunities to explore their socio-political context through, and subsequently to explore how change happens through various mechanisms: these include facilitated sessions in their ‘Home Groups’ (not exceeding 15 individuals), visits to various locations in and around Johannesburg, and specific activities and projects that groups must undertake.

The design of the programme is based on three elements:

• Exposure
• Capacity building
• Action.

These elements, and all the programme activities, are located within a community ethos.

Learner perceptions of the programme were extremely positive, with feedback indicating that individuals feel they have grown personally, and in their understandings of diversity and contexts.