On the occasion of World Youth Skills Day 2020, we fielded questions from the Nation Media Group. Find the interview below:
What is your role in the youth skills development arena?
A. Our role is to bridge the gap between young people and the labour market. We work with both informal and formal sectors to raise the quantity and quality of career opportunities.
As such, The Youth Cafe seeks to provide an opportunity to the youth by addressing the lack of relevant work experience, skills, and competencies including behavioral skills needed for employment by engaging training providers and private sector employers to offer training and work experience to targeted youth in the formal and the informal sector.
Our Skills Development Program finds its uniqueness in being incredibly agile and user-centric. We focus our efforts on building holistic, individualized, experiential learning programs that create behavioral change in the long term. In the past two years, we have changed 5,000 lives, impacted over 100 organizations, achieved a 45% referral rate, and reached 22 counties.
Q. The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown measures have led to the worldwide closure of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions, threatening the continuity of skills development. What strategies have you come up with to support the imparting of skills to youth in the midst of the pandemic?
A. The Youth Cafe in partnership with the University of Sussex and SOS Villages Kenya came up with a new series of events aimed at bringing together students situated on two different continents with the aim of discussing the current Covid-19 global crisis. ‘Lockdown live’ brought together members of Sussex writes at the University of Sussex, Brighton and members of The Youth Café, Kenya, to discuss what impact the pandemic has had on learning, mental health and health literacy, use of technology and mis(dis)information, civic space and participation, safety and protection issues, and the immediate future of the global economy.
Q. On this World Youth Skills Day, what is the importance of equipping young people with skills for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship?
A. With many competing demands for scarce funds, countries often do not fully recognize how critical young people are to their national economies, societies, and democracies – both today and in the future – and consequently make too few public investments in programs to harness their productive resources.
Conversely, without adequate opportunity and investment, youth contribute to the costly problems that plague each world region, such as diseases, violence, and loss of productivity. The accumulation of human and social capital must start at a young age as the brain develops rapidly during early childhood and adolescence. Moreover, early cognitive and non-cognitive skills and health capabilities lead to enhanced effectiveness of later investment.
As a result, by building a strong foundation, investing in programs tailored to children and youth advances socio-economic development. Failing to invest in children and youth triggers substantial economic, social, and political costs resulting from negative outcomes such as early school drop-out, poor labor market entry, risky sexual behaviors, substance abuse, and crime and violence.
Q. From your experience, how effective is distance training in imparting practical skills to youth – especially given the restrictions posed by the coronavirus?
A. Until now due to the lack of experience we all had in distance training and due to the fact that no one was prepared to handle a pandemic as it was (and still is) COVID-19 we can not say or measure the effectiveness of this new way of teaching or training young generations. We think that the results of this will be seen later. What we can confirm is that changes (in general) are hard and what we need to do nowadays is to be flexible to the new circumstances we are facing and that we are all (mentors - freshwoman and freshmen) learning from it and seeing which practices work, which does not and trying to see the best methods to make it work in the most efficient way.
Q. What challenges have you encountered in your efforts to impart skills to youth during this difficult time?
A. Challenges that have left distance learning inferior to its in-person counterpart:
Difficulty in catering to learning styles.
Changing the presentation to suit the audience.
Inability to control the pace and progress of the course.
Distance learning requires self-motivation. Because distance learning is flexible, you need good organization, planning and work to make it happen.
Distance learning is isolated. Although you are in a virtual classroom full of students, the dynamics of interaction change with online education.
Distance learning does not offer immediate feedback. In a traditional classroom setting, a student's performance can be immediately assessed through questions and informal testing. With distance learning, a student has to wait for feedback until the instructor has reviewed their work and responded to it.
Distance learning does not give students the opportunity to work on oral communication skills. Students in distance learning courses do not get the practice of verbal interaction with professors and other students.
Low turn up by the youth- Virtual training/ engagement requires youth to have a stable network and internet connection. Many youths do not have access to the internet as they are unaffordable or have very poor network connectivity.
Q. Experts are of the view that youth will need to be equipped with the skills to successfully manage evolving challenges and the resilience to adapt to future disruptions. In your view, which skills are these?
A. It is true. Youths will need to be reskilled in order to acclimatize to the Post COVID era and also future possible disruptions.
Some of the relevant skills we think are essential:
Adaptability
Creativity and innovation
Data literacy
Critical thinking
Technology skills
Digital and coding skills
Emotional intelligence
Leadership
Q. Many youths are unemployed and the number has been rising. What is your take on entrepreneurship as an option, and what are you doing to encourage young people to embrace self-employment?
A. Many young people tend to view entrepreneurship as “a last resort”. Instead, young people should be prepared from an early age to think of entrepreneurship as a viable career option. It is unfortunate that the young generation would venture into business just because they have no jobs or sustainable wages. We need to develop a sense of entrepreneurship right from primary school. We need to encourage young people to consider entrepreneurship as a viable career path and not an exit plan.
Since 2012, the Youth Innovation Award, a partnership between The Youth Cafe and its partners, has supported 40+ organizations coming from 30+ countries to expand and scale up their innovative projects encouraging youth engagement dialogue. The selected organizations expanded their operations to over 100 countries, impacting over 2.5 million beneficiaries.
Since 2013, The Youth Cafe has launched seven editions of its Youth Enterprise Fund, providing seed funding and capacity-building to 34 youth-led organizations based in Africa. Their projects promoting youth empowerment reached 94,055 direct beneficiaries in 39 countries. In total, more than 1.7 million direct and indirect beneficiaries have been impacted over the past six years.
At The Youth Cafe, we are at the brink of rolling out an incubation centre that aims to accelerate entrepreneurs while providing them with training, mentorship, networking opportunities and access to investment.
Q. Education and training are central to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda (SDG No. 4). What shows that we could be or not be on track to attaining education goals?
A. We are not on track.
According to a report published by UNESCO in 2019, the world is far off track on achieving international commitments to education. For several years now, no progress has been made on access to primary and secondary education. Only one in two young people complete secondary school. Of those who are in school, fewer than one in two reach a minimum level of proficiency in reading and mathematics by the end of primary; in sub-Saharan Africa, only one in ten do so, while the percentage of trained teachers is trending downwards. Disparities abound, with the richest five times as likely to complete secondary school as the poorest. Low-income countries, which have some of the most acute deficiencies in infrastructure and which need external assistance, have seen aid stagnate for a decade.
In as much as commendable progress has been made towards achieving SDG4, and there are new knowledge horizons and opportunities for strengthened solidarity and partnerships around the provision of quality education and lifelong learning for all. Yet the context is also changing with new technologies and skill demands, as well as economic shocks and environmental degradation. Many barriers to education access and educational outcomes remain in place and challenges to the monitoring of progress remain.
Q. Youth are increasingly demanding more just, equitable and progressive opportunities and solutions in their societies. How are you helping them realize that dream?
A. The Youth Cafe has been working in different projects in order to create the conditions of a more equitable and fair society. Some of them are:
Youth Engagement in the Fight Against Corruption and Closing Civic Space: We aim to build the power of young Kenyans to impact government policies, uphold their rights, and fight against corruption and closing civic space, by strengthening evidence-based advocacy for accountability, critical thinking and media skills, and collaboration among state and youth organizations.Women.
Career development and transition program: The Youth Cafe is rolling out a Career development and transition program in Kenya with the hope of expanding regionally. The program is designed for the marginalised youth, especially women, aged between 18 years to 34 years. It seeks to offer comprehensive training to prepare them for the opportunities and challenges during the transition into the job market (formal and informal sectors). With the support of our experienced and qualified facilitators, the participants are guided with a focus on their current education, career aspirations, and transition options in exploratory and educative training and workshops.
Advocacy and Dissemination strategies: One of the main aims that TYC has is to influence decision-making processes within political, economic, and social institutions. In order to achieve this, our organization has developed certain activities, such as: publications to influence public policy, media campaigns, public speaking, commissioning and publishing research. For the purpose of these goals certain dissemination strategies have been designed, for example: infographics-leverage research; thematic social media campaigns; storytelling campaigns; and podcasts shared on radio and internet.
Q. What good practices have you picked from the rest of the world on how to skill youth during a pandemic?
A. Use of virtual platforms to ensure continuity in education and meaningful engagement of the youth through webinars.
Q. Any other comment?
A. Check out our focus areas and themes for more information about our work and contact us with any inquiries.