Project seeks to help youths find, keep jobs
Youth and jobs: it’s a union that everyone agrees is crucial to the nation’s social advancement. But talk is cheap and successful matchmaking has been noticeably rare. Today another major project was unveiled that seeks to put Belize’s underutilised young people to work. News Five’s Jacqueline Woods reports.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Entra twenty-one, an eighteen month pilot project, is designed to provide jobs and skills training for Belizean young men and women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine years old. The initiative is a collaborative effort of the Youth for the Future, The University of Belize, The Belize Business Bureau, and the Inter-American Development Bank.
Dr. Corinth Morter?Lewis, U.B. President
?This partnership will allow us to address some of our sustainable development challenges by helping to provide some three hundred youths with essential information technology skills. We must prepare now to identify businesses, who will be willing to hire them when they have completed their training.?
Geraldo Flowers, Project Developer
?The young people will be recruited and selected by the Youth for the Future in conjunction with the University of Belize. We are targeting young people who have a high school diploma, but may not have the additional training or both customer service and I.T. training necessary for them to be employed.?
Sixty-six percent of the youths recruited are expected to be placed in critical service areas such as computer repairs, database management, webpage designs, and customer service.
Jorge Auil, Jr., President, B.B.B.
?We find that, that is seriously lacking in the youth of today; they are not prepared to come into the business sector. … We want to ensure that the youths find a good job with our members or other people in the business community or if not they can go on their own, because I firmly believe that we need more entrepreneurs in this country.?
For Y.F.F.?s Executive Director, Linsford Castillo, the project will have a direct impact on the estimated seven thousand Belizean youths who currently do not have jobs.
Linsford Castillo, Executive Director, YFF
?It forces us to realize that consistent efforts have to be made to coordinate and to ensure that these adolescents and youths are participating meaningfully in our nation?s social and most importantly economic systems. That they are influencing directly the decisions and processes that affect their interests and their lives, has to remain paramount.?
The project partners were able to secure financing through the Inter-American Development Bank in the amount of two hundred and sixty thousand U.S. dollars in grant funding. I.D.B.?s representative Rodrigo Mayen-Giron, says the project falls within the bank?s framework for social inclusion in poverty reduction.
Rodrigo Mayen-Giron, I.D.B. Representative
?The project is part of an Entra 21 programme created in 2001 by the I.D.B. through the Multi-lateral Investment Fund and in partnership with the International Youth Foundation to assist unemployed youths in Latin America as part of its poverty reduction strategy.?
?Today the programme is funding thirty-five projects in ten countries in the Latin America and Caribbean countries and has trained almost nineteen thousand youths, placing more than fifty-five percent of graduates in jobs and paid internships.?
The project in Belize is the first for the Caribbean and is expected to become a model for other countries to follow. Jacqueline Woods for News five.
A task force is expected to be formed shortly after which the recruitment should commence. If you are interested in learning more about Entra twenty-one please contact any of the three organisations: Youth for the Future, University of Belize or the Belize Business Bureau.
