This date, created by the UN in 2014, seeks to bring visibility to the 1.8 billion adolescents and young people between the ages of 10 and 24, who represent a fourth of the population of the whole world.
In spite of having a fundamental role in the sustainable development of societies, the majority of them can be found in precarious situations of employment or are poorly qualified for them.
The UN estimates that the population of unemployed youths is 75 million, and that young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults. One in five young people (125 million) works, but lives in conditions of extreme poverty (earning less than a dollar a day).
Access to education and professional training for young people is extremely important, because acquiring new knowledge is essential for their integration into the job market.
A quality education, to eradicate poverty and foster sustainability, is the Sustainable Development Objective number 4 on the 2030 UN Agenda, which advocates: “By 2030, substantially increase the number of youths and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and professional competence, for employment, decent work and entrepreneurship.”
The Fraternity – International Humanitarian Missions (FIHM), in its practices developed as a humanitarian response in different regions of the planet, is developing activities in the field of education for overcoming trauma and technical professional training, so that immigrant youth and refugees in socially vulnerable situations can make the transition to the job market and actively participate in their communities and receiving societies.
“Education and technical training are the means necessary so that youths, especially those who in their lives faced emergency and crisis situations, are able to continue building their life plans. The building of those opportunities can be done through education and training initiatives that prepare this age group, whether men or women, for improving their quality of life, deciding if and when to form a family, making it possible to generate a plan that will support their own development, even in challenging situations,” analyzes Anderson Santiago, a humanitarian aid volunteer who is active in the Angola Humanitarian Mission.
Education and refuge in the Roraima Humanitarian Mission
According to data of the Interagency Network of Education in Emergencies (INEE), in 2019, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 127 million children and youths of an age to attend primary and secondary school, who live in countries affected by crises, were not attending school, representing almost 50% of the total out-of-school worldwide population.
For the indigenous Venezuelan immigrants and refugees who live in Roraima State, the reality is not very different. “In spite of education being a universal and fundamental human right, statistically, the majority of indigenous immigrant youths have barely gone through basic primary schooling, not going beyond that stage. This tendency can occur through various factors; so, in light of this scenario, the Indigenous Cultural and Training Centre (CCFI), coordinated by the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM), among its objectives, intends to create opportunities for social integration of these young people, who were forced to leave their countries of origin,” Florência and Ricardo Treno point out, who are humanitarian aid volunteers of the Roraima Humanitarian Mission.
“The objective of the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM) is that of finding solutions that allow these youths to rebuild their lives with dignity and peace. For this reason, the young people have access to opportunities for preparing for an adult life through technical professional courses and training that encourage their artistic and cultural expression, besides learning Portuguese, done in partnership with other institutions,” add the humanitarian aid volunteers.
“To adjust to the aspirations, the dreams and the abilities of those young people, we promote qualification and training for the job market, together with preparation workshops in theory and practice, which help to strengthen their esteem and self-confidence, so they are able to concretize their dreams through their skills, providing them with correct guidance to make good choices for their professional future, and in this way, find opportunities in the job market,” emphasize these humanitarian aid volunteers.
Inclusive Education in the Angola Humanitarian Mission
The Sustainable Development Objective number 4 also seeks to “eliminate gender disparities in education, and ensure equal access to all levels of education and professional training for the most vulnerable, including disabled people, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations.”
In this sense, Anderson points out that “in the area of quality of life and youths, the Sector of Education in Emergencies of the Fraternity – Humanitarian Missions (FIHM), in their activities developed in the Angola Humanitarian Mission., seeks to work in attunement with other sectors, such as that of Livelihoods and the one active with Disabled People, where a good part of the initiatives and projects connect education with inclusiveness, also fostering technical and professional learning that help the young people discover and perfect their individual potential, while at the same time, being able to build and create processes and items that improve the quality of life. That is the case with the soap, dressmaking, maintenance, and bread-making workshops.”
And he adds: “all the aforementioned initiatives must be in attunement with local reality, being preferably hybrid, which is to say, connecting youths affected by the emergencies and crises with those who are part of local society. This includes knowing what the needs and real demands of society are, combining the initiatives with the perspectives of the next steps these youths can take in their life plan.”
Potential and Resilience
The World Youth Skills Day, celebrated today, is an opportunity for our understanding the historic relevance of this moment, where the large proportion of young people is a favorable situation for global development, because we have more people of an age to work than dependents. It is a moment in which we can understand that a young age is the phase of life with a greater potential for deepening studies and the beginning of a professional life, and we recognize their potential for adding diversity, creative power and knowledge which generate the development of nations.
It is an opportune moment for understanding that the energy and innovation which young people bring can give impulse to social progress and directly influence the sustainability and resilience of their communities.
