South African SMEs Take Youth Skills Training into Mpumalanga Mining Communities, Enabled by Decade-Long HCSA-Thinkroom ESD Partnership

Mpumalanga, South Africa: Two South African SMEs that have grown through the decade-long enterprise and supplier development partnership between Hitachi Construction Machinery Southern Africa (HCSA) and Thinkroom are this week delivering four days of youth skills training across four Mpumalanga mining communities. The training, led by Ikusasa Technology Solutions and In My Feelings Game, will reach approximately 120 young people in Middelburg, Kriel, Ogies and Witbank, and is a working example of how long-horizon ESD investment can produce SMEs that go on to deliver social impact.

The training is a corporate social responsibility initiative led and delivered by Ikusasa Technology Solutions and In My Feelings Game, supported through HCSA’s broader social investment commitment in the Mpumalanga mining region. Both founders have grown their businesses through the HCSA, Thinkroom ESD partnership, an investment in capability and potential that is now bearing fruit. This work reflects a significant moment: the realisation of a journey, where supported enterprises step forward to independently lead meaningful impact in their own communities.

The partnership behind this moment is now in its tenth year. Since 2016, Thinkroom has partnered with HCSA to deliver one of the country’s longer-running ESD programmes, building small business capability across HCSA’s value chain. The Mpumalanga training is what happens when that capability compounds: the SMEs HCSA has helped develop are now turning around and taking their own social impact work directly into the communities where HCSA operates.

Thuli Dlamini, founder of Ikusasa Technology Solutions, leads on technical and digital skills: hands-on training in the essential digital tools young people need to work and learn in the current economy. Faith Wesson, founder of In My Feelings Game, leads on life skills and personal development, drawing on her work building emotional intelligence and decision-making capability in young people. Both businesses are running the training as their own CSR initiative, with the partnership as the enabling backdrop.

Each site runs for one day. Middelburg (26 May 2026, Somaphepha MPCC), Kriel (27 May 2026, Life Restoration Miracle Centre), Ogies (28 May 2026, Sizimisele Phola Youth Development Centre) and Witbank (29 May 2026, venue to be confirmed). The training is targeted at highschool and post-school youth, with around 30 beneficiaries per site. The strongest signal that an ESD programme is working is when the SMEs you have supported begin delivering meaningful social impact in their own right. Thuli and Faith are leading this work through Ikusasa and In My Feelings, businesses that have grown through the HCSA, Thinkroom ESD partnership to take on initiatives like this with confidence and purpose. Our role, alongside HCSA, has been to build that foundation and create the conditions for this kind of leadership to emerge. What we are seeing now is that intent translating into real, community-led impact,” says Catherine Young, founder of Thinkroom.”

This is about more than handing over digital tools. It is about showing young people in mining communities that there is a path, and that the path can be walked by someone who looks like them and comes from where they come from. The skills are the tool. The visibility is the gift,” says Thuli Dlamini, founder of Ikusasa Technology Solutions.

“You cannot teach a young person to use a laptop and expect them to know how to use their voice. Life skills and digital skills sit together, not separately. The four-day programme is designed to ensure that, by the end of the experience, every young person walks away equipped with both” says Faith Wesson, founder of In My Feelings Game.

Mpumalanga is at the heart of South Africa’s coal mining belt, and youth unemployment in the province sits well above the national average. Programmes that combine technical capability with life skills, and that are delivered by relatable founders rooted in the same context as the young people they are training, are widely regarded as among the more effective interventions in this kind of setting.

For HCSA and Thinkroom, the rollout is a working example of what compounding ESD looks like. SMEs supported through the corporate value chain do not stay inside the value chain. The strongest of them go on to build social impact in their own right, and the role of the corporate partner and the ESD partner is to enable that, not to own it.