New project tackles youth employment

High youth unemployment is one of the most pressing issues facing the world today and the Talloires Network and Mastercard Foundation are launching a major new initiative to promote greater job opportunities for young people in developing countries, especially in Africa. This was announced in Madrid last Thursday, the final day of the conference. Just how urgent is the need to tackle the joblessness problem has been made only too clear by the unrest, upheavals and revolutions sweeping the Arab world since January. "Unemployment affects 70% to 80% of young people in the Arab region and is the major cause of the revolutions of the Arab Spring," said Heba Nassar, vice-president of community and environment service sector at the University of Cairo, speaking from the conference floor. The initiative on youth economic participation will be known as mobilizing university civic engagement to prepare youth for markets and markets for youth, according to Reeta Roy, President of the Mastercard Foundation. It aims to harness the energy and potential of university community engagement projects from around the world to boost job opportunities for young people - especially marginalised young people not in education and university students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This is the first time the Mastercard Foundation - a young organisation established four years ago - has chosen to work with universities on this scale. "We are bringing universities and communities together to look at how we can help young people gain the skills to help them become economically productive," said Roy. The project is still in the planning stage and the foundation asked Talloires Network members to propose six to eight of their projects already tackling this issue in developing countries. It has earmarked US$5 million to test these propositions with a view to scaling up those that work and tapping into the 220-university-strong membership of the Talloires Network to encourage take-up around the world. "We are looking for innovation, for projects bringing interesting partners together but we are also looking for ones that can provide some hard evidence of what works and why," said Roy. "We know there is tremendous work going on but much of this is not systematically documented." The Talloires Network will put forward a detailed proposal for action within a year. But the rectors and other network members gave a first round of input in the form of comments and suggestions straight from the conference floor. Mónica Jímenez, Director of the Aequalis Forum for Higher Education and until last year Chile's Education Minister, stressed the need for this initiative not only to provide young people with greater economic opportunities but also to instill citizenship and values. María Nieves Tapia, Director of the Latin American Center for Service Learning, called for a leading role for young people in defining the project: "If we do not make them the main actors and organisers, then we run the risk of producing just one more project that tells them what we think they need," Nieves said. Unfortunately, universities sometimes produce what could be called the educated unemployable, that is, graduates whose training has not given them the skills they need to find work, according to Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, a member of the Talloires Network steering committee and a former Pakistani Education Minister. "Neither the Talloires Network nor the Mastercard Foundation has the answer to youth unemployment as we are working in areas where we have limited knowledge," he said. "But this is a global issue, the big issue, whether we are talking about a country which has been struck by natural disasters like Pakistan or conditions which are the result of the economic crisis, and we have to tap into the ideas of young people about how to deal with this." Rebecca Warden 19 June 2011 universityworldnews.com