Fresh drive to create jobs for young people

The subject of youth and employment always begins with the bad news, presumably to set the stage for the ultimate message, usually a justification for an initiative.

And so as put by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in one of its recent communications, “in most regions, the youth unemployment rate is on an upward trend”.

The global labour body states in a report titled, “Global Employment Trends for Youth 2013: A generation at Risk”, that about 73 million youths aged between 15 and 24 worldwide are unemployed, and that the queues for young people seeking employment are getting longer.

So desperate has the situation become in many places around the world that young people are taking up any jobs that come their way. In Kenya, it has been said in several forums, there are about six million youths walking the streets without any decent employment.

That the situation was a time bomb ticking away was repeated on Wednesday (May 29) at the launch a new initiative intended to contribute towards slowing down the pace of that time bomb. It is called Youth With Initiative (YouWin) Awards.

The venture is a creation by Makini Training and Consultancy (MT&C). It intends to stoke the fire in the bellies of 18 to 35 year-olds who have demonstrated the potential to generate jobs for peers.

YouWin Awards key agenda, as explained by the director of MT&C, Mr Joseph Okelo, is to hold the hands of those who will have been identified and awarded as impressive and promising entrepreneurs, and show them the way to greater achievement. That, explained the awards project manager Debra Mburu, will entail apprenticeship, training, coaching and mentoring.

Entries from interested young entrepreneurs will be accepted in June and July, followed by screening in August. The judgement, which Mr Okelo says will involve travelling countrywide to assess the short-listed entrants at their locations, will be carried out in September and October, and the awards given in November. Thereater, the coaching of those awarded will begin.

According to the chairman of the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF), Mr Gor Semelang’o, YouWin Awards project resonates with the activities that the government is pursuing to deal with the tragic level of youth unemployment in the country.

Visibly passionate about his role, Mr Semelang’o went on to outline the series of fresh activities that the Youth Fund had lined up for implementation.

Among them is the creation of virtual offices and incubation centres to support young entrepreneurs; to connect youths to potential markets; and to help others to invest in modern agricultural business activity, which serves the secondary role of stemming rural-urban migration in search of employment.

And as part of promoting entrepreneurship to change attitudes about employment from an early age, YEDF has initiated the setting up of business clubs in selected schools across the country, according to Mr Semelango.