Challenging/ and Helping Young People To Create Their Own Jobs
by Arthur L. Gillette
Over the years, many often-ingenious employment-oriented schemes
for young people have striven to ensure a better match between their
education and training, on the one hand, and the actual needs of the
labour market, on the other. Perhaps surprisingly, this approach - when
implemented by sensitive and imaginative leaders - has been at least
partly successful in even apparently hopeless situations. Take, for
example, Guguletha and other Black townships near Cape Town (South Africa)
in the period immediately following the end of Apartheid. There,
conventional wisdom was that the supply of young job-seekers far
outstripped demand for workers/employees.
An association called Build A Better Society (BABS) decided to
take a second, empirical, look at the actual labour market in the
fast-evolving post-Apartheid socio-economic context. Lo and behold, BABS
discovered that there was an unsatisfied demand for employees with office-related skills such as
typing, filing, book-keeping and the like. It organised a number of
training courses many of whose "graduates" did find jobs.
But what do you do when the situation is hopelessly hopeless, i.e. where salaried employment is far outstripped by youthful
supply, or indeed non-existent? As the following two examples suggest, a
first step is to change your "eyeglasses", i.e. blockbust the mindset with
which you are viewing the employment scene.
Villa El Salvador, Peru
A few kilometres south of Lima, Peru, cheek-by-jowl with the Panamerican
Highway, squats Villa El Salvador. This, despite its "Holy Saviour" name,
is a huge desertified shantytown where living conditions are about as
close to hellish as you can find on our earth. When I visited it in the
1970s, I was told that while Ranking Officials, Ambassadors, and Bishops
brought some help to the sectors nearest the Highway, only minor
functionaries, Embassy First Secretaries and Priests came to the the
sector next-removed, and nobody thought to venture into the third area, farthest from that artery.
In the early 1990s a group of socially-minded Lima university
students decided to "do something" about the massive poverty and youth
employment there. They launched the Colectivo Integral de Desarrollo
(Intergral Development Collective - CID), and quickly realised that
salaried jobs were simply not available for the majority of Villa El
Salvador, especially those in its unvisited third sector. The answer?
"You're the solution, not the problem" - i.e. that with appropriate
motivation and mentoring, and some mini capital - even chronically
unemployed young people could discover, invent and launch their own
micro-enterprises. To stimulate their hope and imagination, CID held a
first job idea competition in 1996 under the challenging title Haz Realidad Tu Negocio which can be freely translated as "Make A Reality of Your Business Idea".
And it worked well enough to attract help from UNESCO, CARITAS and other
bodies.
Since, annual Haz Realidad operations have reached a total of some 30,000 young peope at risk, via
more than 350 schools in some of the most hopeless communities in Peru.
Every year an average of 25 micro-enterprise ideas involving about ten
youngsters each are awarded up to US$ 1,000 per project in launch capital
and initial training, not to forget mentoring for one year.
Brasov, Romania
In 1999, a delegation of French youth-serving agencies visited
this industrial city, near the geographical centre of Romania. Here, a
main problem was that graduates of the local and excellent technical
university found no work locally and were thus forced to (attempt to)
emigrate to Western countries.
One organisation participating in the delegation was EST ("East"), an
acronym for Echanges-Solidarités-Territoires - Exchanges-Solidarities-Territories. A member of EST knew of the Haz Realidad Peruvian project just described, and suggested that a similar youth
self-employment-oriented "challenge and engage" approach be tried. Later
adopted by the French body EU.RO.PE (acronym for Europe-Romania-Eastern
Countries), the project was a while in gestation, but finally launched by
the Youth and Sports Ministry Brasov Provincial Directorate in August
2001, in cooperation with the local Rotary Club and various youth NGOS,
the Austrian foundation HOPE'87 and the French para-statal Défi-Jeunes
(Youth Challenge) programme, as well as EST then its successor EU.RO.PE.
The French France-Libertés Foundation also helped out.
The project title was "Youth Job Idea Competition."
Its phases:
* August-November 2001: Media campaign to inform and attract young job-seekers, and reception and analysis by the
Youth and Sports Provincial Directorate of 30 micro-enterprise ideas
proposed singly or in small groups by 75 people between 16 and 29 years of
age according to a uniform questionnaire/grid.
* November-December 2001: Selection of 12 micro-enterprise ideas.
* December 2001-March 2002: Provision of 100 hours of training to those having proposed the 12 ideas; the "passing-out examination" from
training was the preparation by applicants of a business plan plan for each of eight micro-enterprise ideas (the other four, who didn't
prepare business plans, received training diplomas).
* April 2002: Meeting of a Jury composed of representatives of the Brasov Youth and Sports Directorate,
EST, Défi Jeunes and the Brasov Rotary Club: detailed examination of the
eight business plans and interviews of the young people proposing them;
selection of four laureate ideas; award of capital ranging from 700 to
1,700 Euros mini-capital to each, with an aggregate laureate idea sexual
distribution of three women and four men.
The micro-enterprise ideas awarded:
(i) Russian-language sports/adventure/cultural tourism
possibilities in Romania for people from the Commonwealth of Independent
States;
(ii) Recreational/sports/cultural activities for Brasov children
and youngsters during school breaks;
(iii) Project identification/preparation/negotiation consultative
services for local NGOs and small businesses; and
(iv) Commercial packaging design, and interior decoration.
* May 2002-present: Legal registration of the micro-enterprises, and mentoring by local businesspeople.
* June and October 2002: Evaluations:
(i) Problems identified included the necessity for better and more comprehensive
information on launching such Job Idea Competitions; and, "without
neglecting the needs of jobless middle-class youth in a university town,
/the need/ also to reach effectively participants of more fragile
socio-economic backgrounds."
(ii) On the positive side, the evaluation stated that the Job Idea Competition approach had
solid achievements to its credit at Brasov, and offers "a possible formula
which ... holds out hope of making significant inroads into youthful
unemployment in /Romania and/ other countries in transition as well as ...
developing countries."
********
What preliminary conclusion can be culled from these experiences,
literally half a world away one from the other?
A main point to make is that these cases are not miraculous; they have had
their ups and downs, just as any pilot - or even ongoing - activity does.
And yet, they are not fairy tales either, but real life stories. Their
message/lesson? That apparently hopeless situations of youthful
unemployment can - if approached with determination and imagination -
harbour the seeds of gainful enterprise. When salaried jobs are not
available - or even when they are - self-employment in youth-managed
micro-enterprises can offer at least a partial solution. As Welsh author
Dylan Thomas titled one of his poems, "Light breaks where no sun shines."
__________________________
* Arthur L. Gillette served as Director of UNESCO's Division of Youth and
Sports Activities and is now Resources Coordinator of the International
Council on National Youth Policy (ICNYP).
Arthur Gillette
(Meudon, France)
Armedv@aol.com
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