Hard work, digital cash

Johannesburg - The good deeds of unemployed youngsters in Cape Town are literally paying off, as local NGO Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) is turning their good works into Zlto, an electronic currency that rewards them for work they do in the community.

It works by these youngsters approaching people or organisations to see if they need assistance.

It can be as mundane as cleaning someone’s backyard or be a bit more involved, such as creating bags from recycled material.

Once they have done the work, they send pictures of it to RLabs as confirmation.

The NGO also does spot checks with clients to verify that the work has been done.

When all the checks have been completed, RLabs places Zltos into a specially created app of the phones of the young people.

They can then use the currency at stores like Shoprite and Mr Price to make selected purchases, and even use it to pay for medical consultations.

RLabs founder Marlon Parker says that, although there is a limit to the kinds of goods they can buy, it was not done without reason.

“We created a closed marketplace. We looked at the things young people needed to get them to be employable.”

Zlto can also be used to pay for access to and training at Youth Cafés, which are backed by the Western Cape government.

Parker says there was no one person who came up with the idea to create Zlto. The name comes from zlato, the Czech word for gold.

It grew out of a collaborative effort inside RLabs to address a need.

While the goal of Zlto was to provide some kind of income for people who do not have easy access to work, Parker says the project has evolved.

As RLabs has been able to keep track of the work the participants have done, it has, in effect, created a work record for people who have never held down a job.

“The traditional CV is not powerful enough for young people when they apply for jobs. But through the records we have kept, we can provide prospective employers with not only a work history, but also a record of the skills they have learnt,” says Parker.

The impact of the two-year old programme has been far-reaching.

To date 20 400 people have participated, and Zlto to the value of R9.4 million (using R15 an hour) have been created.

Parker notes that this figure undercounts the true value, as jobs like tutoring and building websites for NGOs and small businesses that require more specialised work would cost more than R15 an hour.

He points out that the rand value does not tell the whole story, as it does not fully show how it has benefited poor communities in Cape Town.

Over 627 000 community/work hours have been created, which benefited over 345 000 people.

If the savings to organisations or communities from having young people doing work for them were included in the rand value, the Zlto programme would have generated R15 million to R20 million in value.

RLabs received backing from the MasterCard Foundation, Omidyar Network, Shoprite and local tech firm wiGroup.

The Zlto programme has been successful, but for it to work requires RLabs to either get products and services as corporate social responsible gifts from participating retailers or buy in bulk from service providers.

Fortunately for Parker and RLabs, it is able to not only sustain the programme but also plan to expand out of the Western Cape, because it received funding from the MasterCard Foundation late last year.

He says the thinking is to expand province by province so they can understand the context of each area they move into.