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RLabs Youth Cafés and the Zlto Exchange system

2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 43; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0144929x.2023.2263089

1362-3001

Jörn Christiansson,

Impact of Technology on Adolescents

ABSTRACTThis article presents a study of a youth café initiative for skills training in South Africa where a reward system with community currency (the ZE system) is implemented on smartphones to promote personal development and prepare youth for the job market in socially challenged communities. The youth receive currency in exchange for taking part in skills training and community work that can be spent on services and consumables in the local community. This study assesses the qualitative performance of the ZE system and youth café operation, through an inductive qualitative analysis of interviews with youth café visitors and staff. Using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a lens, the analysis focuses on how the youth café operation supports motivation for personal development. Results indicate that the youth cafés provide a platform for developing self-determination and promoting personal development. However, this is not a result from the ZE system alone, but rather from how it is embedded in the supportive environment of the youth cafés, as well as the integration of the youth café operation in the local communities. In conclusion, the youth café operation, with its digital reward system, may be viewed as an example of an empowering socio-technology for development.CCS CONCEPTS: Human-centred computingHuman-centred computingCollaborative and social computingHuman-centred computingCollaborative and social computingEmpirical studies in collaborative and social computingKEYWORDS: Smartphonescommunity currencypersonal developmentmotivationself-determination theorysocial transformation AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Marlon and Renée Parker at RLabs for introducing me to the RLabs Youth Cafés. I would also like to thank Clara Messeter for assisting in transcribing the interviews with her skills in understanding the urban lingo and slang spoken by the RLabs Youth Café visitors, mixing English with expressions in Afrikaans.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).