Training opportunities a priority for youth

President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB),
Luis Alberto Moreno.

A number of young people in our hemisphere, in the 18-24 age bracket, are lacking the necessary skills to meet the demand of today’s job market. However, programmes which focus on internships and training could very well prove useful for these youth who may later desire to become entrepreneurs.

These were the sentiments expressed recently by President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Luis Alberto Moreno, as he spoke at a press briefing held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre here in Barbados, during Foromic 2012, the XV Inter-American Microenterprise Forum. 

President Moreno was at the time responding to a question from The Barbados Advocate about the IDB’s efforts to aid youth in entrepreneurship endeavours.  

Moreno acknowledged that over the years, the IDB has been instrumental in helping youth to be their own bosses. He however noted that there is a specific grouping which may need some extra help and he outlined the initiatives being carried out to aid such a grouping.

“One of the paradoxes that we have today in our hemisphere, [is that] on the one hand, we know all in all our economies have fared fairly well in the face of the international financial crisis and some countries are trending towards full employment in the way that they have, [there is] currently 5 per cent or 4 per cent unemployment, which is trending towards full employment. 

“But the main paradox is that young people, and I am talking here largely of those 18 to 24, have unemployment rates that are around 18 per cent to 20 per cent. So the big question is, why is this happening? And there are many reasons, but one of the reasons without a doubt that we are finding is a lack of skills,” President Moreno asserted.

“In other words, those young people are entering the labour market without the adequate skills that the job market is demanding,” he explained.

“It is for this reason that we created a programme that we call New Employment Opportu nities (NEO), where we basically teamed up with the largest employers in our hemisphere – companies such as Walmart, Microsoft, Caterpillar, McDonalds and others – with the sole purpose of providing internships and ways to do specific training for young people, that they can enter later into the job market with a set of skills that the job market is demanding. That’s in terms of conventional employment,” Moreno continued.

“Of course, youth entrepreneurship is extremely important and here what we strive to do is create a set of tools that are not only [targeted towards] training, but [also] financing, mentoring etc. to support those young entrepreneurs in how they become successful,” Moreno noted in relation to the unconventional side of employment.

Launched earlier this year, the NEO initiative aims to improve job entry on a significant scale among poor and low-income youth by bringing together key private and public actors to provide high-impact, market-relevant training and job placement services to the region’s young people. Through this ambitious initiative, the private sector will play a leading role in helping governments develop strategies to address youth unemployment in the region. The aim is that youth who go through the programme and gain necessary skills for employment may venture out on their own in the future, having built on their new skill base. (RSM)