Funding needed for TYI

Sharlene Swartz is currently working at the Human Sciences Research Council. The Youth Institute is therefore looking for a motivated person to pioneer this important work. More importantly it needs some seed funding to allow us to find sustainable funding to keep TYI happily operational. TYI can operate on a budget of R1.2 million rand a year. For financial information click here

New book by Sharlene Swartz released

A new book by Dr Sharlene Swartz entitled 'The Moral Ecology of South Africa's Township Youth' was released in December 2009 (Palgrave Macmillan). Dr Swartz has also authored 'Teenage Tata: Voices of Young Fathers in South Africa' (with Arvin Bhana), published by the HSRC Press (Cape Town).

What's moral for township youth?

Being good in a bad world: What's 'moral' for township youth?

How does growing up in a township affect your moral formation? Does it impact negatively or positively? Are township youth more or less moral than their middle-class counterparts? These were the key questions that led SHARLENE SWARTZ to conduct her doctoral research on the moral lives of South Africa�s township youth.

Over 15 months, 37 young people, aged between 15 and 19 who live in the Langa-Khayelitsha corridor of Cape Town, spoke openly and in a sophisticated way of their understanding of morality. They exhibited conventional values in areas such as substance use, violence and crime, while questioning conservative values around sex, money and respect. Despite self-identifying much of their behaviour as 'wrong', young people locate themselves as overwhelming 'good' while positioning others as either protected 'mommy's babies', 'right ones', 'skollies' or 'kasi boy/girl'.


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International award for Swartz's Cambridge PhD dissertation

Dr Sharlene Swartz's dissertation, "The Moral Ecology of South Africa's township youth", completed at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the Association for Moral Education's 2008 Kuhmerker Dissertation Award. The award was made at the AME's 34th annual conference held at Notre Dame University, Indiana. The dissertation has been published as 'The moral ecology of South Africa's township youth' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).