ABSTRACT
This chapter zooms inside the Joint Enrichment Project (JEP) to introduce its flagship pilot program, the Youth Work Scheme (YWS), and a group of 1998 YWS participants. From the orientation at a location in the countryside to work on-site in the townships to workshops in JEP's Johannesburg office, the YWS emphasized personal development, not just technical skills. The young adults in this study came to the YWS feeling in-between in respect to their experiences of time (historically, personally, and culturally), material circumstances (housing and employment) and voice (public discourses). By the end of the program, they had experienced a shift from feeling in-between in a country that was transitioning all around them, to a feeling of being in transition themselves socially and culturally. Learning in the YWS was fundamentally about “moving around” as one participant put it: Symbolically repositioning oneself by participating in the intersection of discourses that permeated JEP. The concept of repositioning episodes is introduced as a window into learning in the YWS, to explain how participants took up new relational positions through their discourse.
