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The Microsoft-commissioned report, Opportunity for Action, brings us a new perspective on a tale already told about the lack of opportunity for today’s youth. Reports on this dilemma have been written already; the International Monetary Fund made it the focus of their March 2012 Finance & Development magazine , and the International Labour Organization issued its report “Global Employment Trends for Youth: 2011 update” in October ’11. But Opportunity for Action stands out for its overall feeling of optimism. Written by the International Youth Foundation (IYF), the report is a call to action for everyone.
Keeping in mind that the audience will reach beyond policy makers, the report presents the complex problem in an accessible style and structure, centered on six improvements that will help today’s youth move forward: quality education, marketable technical skills, jobs, decent working conditions, entrepreneurship opportunities, and life skills.
Each section of the report highlights an organization that is successfully bringing about change. These sidebars provide examples of what can be done and add a welcome boost of hope to the findings. It should be noted that the organizations share a common factor: funding from Microsoft and/or IYF.
Scanning the membership list of the Global WA network, we can find a number of organizations whose work to improve the future for the world’s youth could also be highlighted: Smiles Forever trains young women in Bolivia as dental hygienists, Rwanda Girls Initiative focuses on bettering education, Kabissa uses ICT to connect African communities, Committee for Children produces life skills training programs for young adults. The list goes on. A common factor they share is the job of securing the funding or building the partnership that would allow their programs to soar to even greater heights.
Microsoft commissioned this report to “[generate] dialogue about how technology and other investments can help bridge the divide for youth around the world and is committed to working with businesses, the NGO community, and governments to help youth succeed in the global economy.” The report gives each sector ‘Action Items’ to help guide forward progress. Those for NGOs and civil society are
• Identify and implement proven practices at large scale.
• Experiment and innovate with new models that use technology effectively and that reduce costs without sacrificing impact and evaluate results.
• Collaborate with the private sector to create demand driven training.
• Work closely with vulnerable youth to strengthen their competencies in preparation for employment or entrepreneurship opportunities.
There is no doubt this report will generate dialogue and encourage all sectors to take some action. There still needs to be more robust dialogue about how collaboration between NGOs and the private sector will be facilitated and by whom, and from what sources will NGOs find the funding to ‘experiment and innovate with new models that use technology.’ It’s good to read that Microsoft is committed to work across sectors. Hopefully, more will follow its lead, and NGOs already engaged in helping today’s youth will have the opportunity to strengthen and broaden the scope of their work.
You might read the title and think, “What, is he crazy? What does a popular band have to do with global hunger?”
Ok, here goes.
For more than a decade, the best selling British band Coldplay has been one of Oxfam’s biggest supporters. With an interest in using their global celebrity for good, Coldplay teamed up with Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign beginning in 2002 to advocate for the end of the rigged rules and double standards of the global trading system. Band members delivered petitions to trade ministers meeting in Mexico in 2003, met with farmers from developing countries to learn more, and spoke out at their concerts around the world.
So what are they up to now?
Coldplay has continued to have an Oxfam presence on their tours and we’re back at it again this year. The U.S. leg of their upcoming tour starts in Portland on April 24 and then comes to KeyArena in Seattle on April 25 and we’ll be there. Want to join us?
We won’t be there to ask for your money, we’re there to ask for your voice.
This year Coldplay is teaming up with Oxfam to support our GROW campaign. We launched the GROW campaign last year with the goal of building a better food system: one that sustainably feeds a growing population (estimated to reach nine billion by 2050) and empowers poor people to earn a living, feed their families, and thrive.
We are advocating for better policies that support the efforts of small farmers in developing countries. We have an opportunity this spring to make changes to U.S. government policy through the Farm Bill – the legislation that governs America’s domestic and foreign agriculture policy. Through our joint research with American Jewish World Service, we found that up to 17 million people could receive life-saving food aid at no additional cost to U.S. taxpayers if Congress cuts red-tape in the U.S. Farm Bill.
Right now, more than 50 percent of the aid money the government spends on basic food grains is wasted. Instead of being used to fight hunger, these funds get caught up in overhead costs and fees, from paying for the high-priced food aid agencies are forced to buy, even if there are cheaper local alternatives available, to covering the exorbitant shipping charges of delivering aid on a limited number of expensive U.S. vessels.
This wasteful government system not only costs taxpayers dollars – it can also create delays of up to four or six months before aid arrives. For a community facing food shortages, such as those facing a pending crisis in the Sahel or those affected by last year’s drought in the Horn of Africa, those months can be the difference between life and death.
We can change this system for the better this year. Congress is currently debating the Farm Bill and Oxfam is gathering petitions across the country. We’ll be out at the Coldplay show to get more people to sign on. In Coldplay’s hit 2002 song “Clocks,” Chris Martin asks, “Am I a part of the cure or am I a part of the disease?” It’s time to rally around a cure for fixing our food aid system. Join us April 25 at KeyArena to spread the word. (Did I forget to mention that you’ll also get to see the show for free?!?)
Jonathan Scanlon is based in Seattle and is Lead Organizer, Economic Justice at the international relief and development organization Oxfam America, a new member of Global Washington.
On March 27, the International Youth Foundation released “Opportunity for Action,” a global snapshot of current state of social and economic opportunities for the world’s young people. That same day, IYF, Microsoft, and The Atlantic marked the report’s release with a worldwide town hall discussion in Charlotte, North Carolina on “The Jobs & Economy of the Future: Educating the Next Generation to Compete.” In the report, Bill Reese, President and CEO of IYF, wrote, “We need concerted, organized action that will lift us beyond today’s array of pilot youth development programs to a place where significant investments are made in proven practices and programs that can then be taken to scale.” The key to achieving this, he says, is partnerships between youth, civil society, and the public and private sectors. Corporate, government, and civic leaders are becoming increasingly aware of this, but if they do not act quickly, entire generation will never recover from the lost opportunities of its youth.
IYF and Microsoft’s programs are empowering some remarkable young people from across the world to meet the challenges they face head-on. An IYF fellowship helped Naadiya Moosaje turn South African Women in Engineering (SAWomEng) into a program where 81 volunteers mentor and guide over 2,000 girls. A Microsoft and IYF-sponsored Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) in Kenya allowed Monica Njau to start a small business that allowed her to attend university, support her destitute family and cancer-stricken mother, land a job as an insurance sales representative, and, most impressively, support her sisters’ higher education as well.
To make the millennial generation’s lives better than those of its parents, we must create millions of new opportunities for people like Naadiya and Monica. Today, there are 1.2 billion people aged 15 to 24. In 2035, there will be 1.5 billion. There is an enormous gap between what education systems give the world’s youth and what the global labor market demands from them. In many rich countries, youth unemployment is the highest in living memory: 18% in America, 22.3% in Britain, 30% in Italy, and almost 50% in Greece and Spain. And yet, as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told the audience, “there are no good jobs for high-school dropouts” while “we have over 2 million high-skill jobs that we can’t fill.” In Brazil, 40% of firms have difficulty filling vacancies due to Brazil’s low-quality education outcomes. In the Middle East and North Africa, almost 25% of youth are unemployed in official statistics (the reality is probably even worse). The report estimates that 600 million jobs must be created over the next decade to make up for the jobs lost to the economic crisis.
Education alone cannot provide a comprehensive solution for youth unemployment. While higher education improves young Latin Americans’ employment opportunities, university-educated youth in the Middle East and North Africa are actually more likely to be unemployed than their less-educated peers (especially in Morocco and Tunisia). Across the region, civil service jobs are declining, the private sector is struggling, and rates of female participation in the labor market are stagnating. These problems demand a fundamental re-ordering of the region’s political economy and education system, but there are few signs, even in post-revolution Tunisia and Libya, that such a process is taking place.
“Opportunity for Action” concludes with an action plan that everyone can play a role in. The report calls on policymakers to reduce barriers to youth entrepreneurship, to create new programs and incentives for training, internships, and apprenticeships for disadvantaged youths, and to ensure high-quality secondary and tertiary education that matches the labor market’s demands. It urges NGOs and bilateral and multilateral donors to evaluate program outcomes rigorously, to support demand-driven skills training programs, and to invest in public-private partnerships that turn successful, proven practices into large-scale, sustainable programs. Lastly, it encourages young people to seek career guidance, to be continuous learners, to let go of preconceived notions about livelihood opportunities, and, most importantly, to not give up.
To watch the video of the town hall event, please visit the Atlantic’s website or watch the embedded video below.