How would a global campaign for youth employment work ?

THE CASE FOR URGENT ACTION ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

Wh do e eed a glo al a paig for outh e plo e t ?

In Calais, earlier this year, I met with some young African and Asian women and men hanging around, eager to come to the UK to get a job and kickstart their lives. Their faces and their stories impressed upon me the absolute priority of creating decent jobs and livelihoods for smart young people like these back home in their own countries. Because each one of them agreed: if such jobs existed in their home countries, they would not have had to undertake the perilous journey to Europe.

We, in the OECD DAC countries, along with the private sector, institutions like the World Bank and IMF + LIC Governments and youth themselves – need to do much, much more to address the priority of creating jobs for young people.

You will read in this booklet of those from each sector who are doing just this. The Mastercard Foundation is leading2 the way with its commitment to enabling 30 million African youth, especially young women, to secure dignified and fulfilling work by 2030. But every contributor has an important story to tell. The purpose of our Campaign is to draw all these lessons together, and work with individual governments and their local stakeholders to create a bespoke suite of policies that will create thousands of new jobs for youth in their own specific context.

This has been a passion of mine all my working life. I have seen international cooperation on malaria, and other diseases such as HIV/AIDS and TB, achieve extraordinary results in less than 20 years

2 Young Africa works, by the CEO of Mastercard Foundation, See Page 130. - 17 -

THE CASE FOR URGENT ACTION ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

through the Gates Foundation, the Global Fund, Medicines for Malaria Venture and other initiatives. It is estimated that we will need to create 600 million new jobs in the next 10-15 years to meet the demand of a growing population. The potential consequences of failing to create them are clear – increased poverty, forced migration and conflict. So more international cooperation around the creation of jobs and livelihoods for young people has to be a priority for all of us.

Last year, I met Ronald, a young Ugandan tech entrepreneur. After losing his parents, he paid his way through school and university through farming. He is now developing apps for use in agriculture and providing work for several young Ugandans. But not only that, he is sharing his knowledge and skills with many others so that they too can find work or set up on their own. When I visited their offices with Nathan Nandala MP, my colleague on the Board of the Parliamentary Network, it was a hive of creative activity and an inspiration to us both.

It is people such as Ronald and his colleagues who will be playing a key role in creating these jobs. They can see what is required and have the energy, commitment and skills to achieve it, not just for their own future but for that of their fellow countrymen and women. Involving young people in this campaign is not just a nice thing to do: it is essential to generating the energy and creativity that will ensure its success.

For young people have an endless capacity to surprise – as you will read in these pages: who would have thought a couple of Tunisian brothers would have created the first car to be designed and built in Africa: the Wallyscar.3 Who would have thought a 16-year old Ugandan would have started a Venture Capital company to support his peers to create their own companies – or a 22-year old Brazilian woman would start a movement of young entrepreneurs that created over a thousand

3 See page 54 a tribute to innovative Tunisian youth. - 18 -

THE CASE FOR URGENT ACTION ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

companies in its first ten years of operation?

But young people need more support, more finance and more training as well as governments which are open and friendly to enterprise. They need an education system which teaches the skills to do market research, to identify business opportunities, and acquire the skills to create and grow new companies successfully.

I have seen several governments working to teach work-readiness in schools, to create better access for young people to small business micro-finance and to appropriate technical training and apprenticeships.

They also recruit youth to work on public works programmes to improve infrastructure and introduce active labour market policies(ALMPs) to create more business-friendly environments. Some are successful, some less so.

The Global Campaign for Youth Employment will highlight why some of these are successful, and some are not. Its aim is practical: to secure increased inward investment and policies that create job growth, and not just wealth growth. It will act as a clearing-house for information on which policies are effective, and which are less effective, in creating good, satisfying and sustainable jobs and livelihoods for the rapidly expanding youth populations of Low Income Countries (LICs). And it will encourage LIC governments, donors, international institutions, private sector companies, educators and youth themselves to work together and do much, much more to make youth job creation a major policy priority in the coming years.

Only in that way will the young men and women I met in Calais earlier this year be enabled to live fulfilling lives in their home countries and not be tempted to risk perilous journeys to escape poverty.

THE CASE FOR URGENT ACTION ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

DAVID WOOLLCOMBE

PRESIDENT OF PEACE CHILD INTERNATIONAL

THE CASE FOR URGENT ACTION ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

A Short Histor of Youth Jo Creatio

From fathers teaching sons the techniques of warfare, farming or state-craft, to mediaeval guilds teaching apprentices their trades; from Roosevelt’s Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps – building schools, bridges and woodland trails, to the Soviet Communist Party’s commitment to cradle-to-grave employment – youth job creation has long been a feature of local and national governance.

Following the end of the 2nd World War, some students founded AIESEC – to build international solidarity and create alternatives to military jobs which elders had, traditionally, relied on youth to fill. AIESEC, founded in 1948, was an early example of youth fostering leadership through creating exchanges, conferences and internships. Now one of the largest youth-led organisations in the world, with over 70,000 members, it has pioneered the concept of youth agency: - 21 -

THE CASE FOR URGENT ACTION ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

youth pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and creating their own jobs and livelihoods. Though some youth still believe that the world, or society, owes them a living, youth job creation should always begin with youth taking control of their destiny.

In the short history of international development assistance, the idea of ending poverty through creating jobs is a relatively recent phenomenon. An early example was the setting up of the Prince’s Trust in the UK. When Prince Charles left the navy in 1976, he used his severance pay to fund small projects in deprived areas. This grew and, in the early 1980s, unemployment reached a 50-year high and riots broke out in Brixton, Birmingham and Liverpool. Charles visited the rioters and asked them why they didn’t get jobs. “No jobs round here,” they told him [ - correctly! Toxteth in Liverpool had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.] “So why don’t you start a business – create your own job?” asked Charles. “No one would give us any money to do that,” they replied. And Charles thought a moment, then said: “I would.” And so started the Prince’s Trust Enterprise Programme which, since 1983, has started 80,000 mostly disadvantaged young people in business – several of whom have gone on to become millionaires, and captains of industry.

The model was franchised around the world in 1990 by the Prince’s International Business Leaders Forum IBLF which eventually spun it off as the independent Youth Business International. This now works in 50 countries and has helped tens of thousands of young people launch their own businesses. The Prince’s Trust pioneered the concept of business start-up mentors finding that, with a caring mentor, 70 to 80% of new businesses survived and prospered for at least three years. Without a mentor, that figure dropped to around 20%. It also devised ways for youth to access to capital for there is nothing more frustrating for young people than to do business plan

THE CASE FOR URGENT ACTION ON YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

creation training, create a viable business plan, and then find there is no way to access the funds needed to operationalise it.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the Prince’s Trust has been much flattered – especially by the Commonwealth. Many Commonwealth countries now have branches of Youth Business and/or Prince’s Trust International. The Commonwealth Secretariat has, since 1973, had an active Youth Programme, now almost exclusively focussed on youth enterprise and job creation. It has created 4 x Commonwealth Alliance of Young Entrepreneurs (CAYEs) – in the Caribbean & Canada, in Asia and in East & Southern Africa. These bring together young entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and inventors, enabling them to share ideas and build businesses together. Through its research, its awards programmes and its regular meetings of ministers and thought-leaders, the Commonwealth member states put into effect their belief that young people aged 15-29 are assets to a country's development and should be empowered to realise their potential4 .

Around the turn of the millennium, youth job and enterprise creation entered the main stream of development thinking. Peace Child International developed the concept of ‘youth-led development’ – development delivered by young people, not just for young people. In 2003, Hand in Hand Co-Founder Percy Barnevik teamed up

4 See commonwealth youth leaders’ essays, pages from 190 to 210. - 23 -