BEST is part of the Skills Development Strategy Initiative (SDSI) supported by GTZ in South Africa. For the present implementing phase it aims to ensure that "Competent training providers in the Free State and Eastern Cape Provinces are training young adults from disadvantaged communities for income-generating activities, especially in the area of building, construction and related industries in the informal sector."

Since its origination in 1992, BEST has shifted its focus from community development through NGOs offering training to acquire basic vocational skills to an approach with a more wide-spread impact and a higher degree of sustainability: Integrating skills and knowledge transfer with self-employment initiatives and simultaneously contributing towards the alleviation of the housing shortage.

The target group, young adults from marginalized communities in the Free State and Eastern Cape Province, are offered innovative models of "training in production" with (self-) employment creation schemes.

The project concept consists of activities on three interlinked levels:

Micro-level: elaboration and testing of innovative skills development programmes for the informal sector in co-operation with local training providers: starting with basic skills training followed by facilitating emerging contractors/entrepreneurs (e.g. in the construction and building material industry) and diversification into the support for establishing small self-employment units for instance home-based livestock (sheep/goat/pig) or home-based hydro phonic vegetable (spinach/tomato) production units.
Meso-level: capacity-building and counterpart training for the provincial administration of the Department of Labour; qualification of suitable vocational education and training providers at the provincial level.
Macro-level: feeding of test-run training results into provincial and finally national skills development schemes - which has already been accomplished for the now officially certified house-building module.