With young people forming a third of the country’s population and very few jobs available, skilling the youth has become vital for tackling unemployment in the long and medium term. How is that to be done?

Instead of guessing what skills are required to equip the massive youth population, listen to the youth and listen to the potential employers, says Omar Abdi, Executive Director for Programmes, Unicef, who was in India recently.

His agency is the co-ordinator of a platform that is bringing together multi-stakeholders who wish to turn the country’s youth into a demographic opportunity. And to do it has been formed YuWaah! It is a platform that includes the Central government, state governments, the private sector, civil society organisations and several UN agencies. The aim is to co-create solutions for young people, including flexible learning programmes, life and employability skills, career guidance and work opportunities.

To bring about large-scale change through such a multi-partnership, YuWaah! plans to identify the priority areas, bring networks together, listen to adolescents and youth and involve them in creating the right solutions. Partners would also share funding and resources according to their role, strength and ability.

Vital suggestions

But first Unicef decided to listen to the adolescents and youth to understand their needs, aspirations and how they want to go forward. This was done through State-level consultations that threw up vital suggestions and pointed towards the challenges the young face.

“All my friends want to move out of my village for better employment opportunities. We need viable solutions at village level to address the issue of migration,” said a young person from Bihar. His/her counterpart in Maharashtra wanted “a Resource Centre in school and communities for career guidance, education and schemes related to employment opportunities.” A young girl from West Bengal said, “In my local area, we girls lose the opportunity to build our own lives due to child marriage. This must be stopped. We must get equal opportunities to study, earn and to be independent.”

Youth from Jharkhand felt career guidance should be incorporated in the school learning so that after graduation it is easy to get information on education opportunities and career choices. A youngster from Gujarat requested for flexible learning and equal job opportunities for children dropping out of schools and those affected by seasonal migration. Many of the children spoke of challenges due to caste discrimination, the lack of access and affordability of secondary education, low parental support to break social barriers, hardly any flexible learning and digital education opportunities and, most of all, low self-confidence.

These voices, Unicef hopes, will help the partners sit together to “design, scale up and deliver the education, training and support that young people need, to shape better futures for themselves and their societies.”

Double-sided coin

The UN agency points out that in the next 20 years, India’s current population of 444 million children will enter the job market. “It is a double-sided coin for India… and can be a big opportunity for India,” says Abdi. “This is the time to invest in our youth… a second big wave of investment after education.”

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