Mr Price Foundation invests R39.2m in skills, entrepreneurship and education to empower 12,180 youth in FY2026

The foundation detailed its progress in its newly released Integrated Impact Report FY2026, following R39.2m in programme investment across skills, entrepreneurship and education.

“We set ourselves an ambition to empower 500,000 young South Africans by 2035, and FY2026 was about strengthening the model before we scale it,” said Octavius Phukubye, executive director of Mr Price Foundation.

“We want every investment to translate into meaningful outcomes which are about helping a young person move into work, an employer hire more efficiently, a young business grow, or a school strengthen the foundations for future opportunity.”

The foundation directed 79.8% of total expenditure to programmes and projects, prioritising interventions that demonstrate quantifiable value to young people and to the employers, businesses and schools they work with.

Retail Frontline

In its Retail Frontline programme, employers hiring through the programme achieved a 2:1 interview-to-hire ratio, against a traditional 4:1 benchmark, alongside 19% lower termination rates and estimated savings of R3,132 per hire.

These efficiencies carry particular weight as businesses navigate constrained hiring budgets and cost pressures, against a backdrop of 40.6% unemployment among South Africans aged 25 to 34.

The foundation trained 10,167 unemployed youth through its skills development portfolio, with 7,274 securing employment opportunities, a 71.5% placement rate.

Of those placed, 5,811 were absorbed into Mr Price Group divisions, 616 were placed with external partners, and 847 were employed elsewhere.

The demand-led model calibrates training to real workplace requirements across retail, manufacturing and agriculture, giving employers a pipeline of candidates positioned to contribute from the outset.

Tomorrow’s business leaders

In entrepreneurship development, the foundation supported 1,241 youth entrepreneurs and disbursed R1.53m in seed funding to 27 businesses through the Bindzu Youth Fund.

The funded businesses achieved average revenue growth of 24.5% and created at least 125 new jobs, excluding business owners.

Seed capital is paired with business development, mentorship, coaching and market access support, strengthening the commercial sustainability of youth-owned enterprises.

Children are the future

The education development portfolio reached 14,983 learners across 32 schools and supported 405 educators and 86 school management team members.

Learners recorded an average 16% improvement across literacy and numeracy assessments. At the same time, all 21 schools in the EduRise Legacy Programme met key operational benchmarks by the end of the programme, up from 28% previously.

FY2026 also marked the conclusion of the four-year Roots and Shoots Study, which tracked approximately 580 children from grade R to grade three.

The study found that early learning gains can fade without continued access to quality teaching throughout the Foundation Phase, and this evidence now informs the design of future education interventions.

Inspring hope

Across its three portfolios, the foundation’s programmes empowered 12,180 young people in FY2026.

Alongside institutional and corporate funding, the foundation’s Hope4Youth campaign gave Mr Price Group customers a direct way to contribute, generating R3.8m in FY2026 through more than 288,000 individual donations made at checkout, in-store and online, across 1,638 stores nationwide.

The foundation’s 2035 strategy targets the meaningful economic participation of 500,000 young South Africans, with an average social return on investment of R10 for every rand deployed over the 10 years.

“As we enter year two, our focus is on taking what the evidence tells us works and building the partnerships that will allow us to extend that impact responsibly,” said Phukubye.

“Reaching 500,000 young people will require business, government, communities and civil society to work together.

“The opportunity now is to turn strong early outcomes into impact.”