Youth unemployment is one of the biggest social injustices of our time. It affects young people from all walks of life – informal street sellers on the streets of Lagos to recent graduates in Europe.
Youth unemployment is an everyday drudging reality for 73 million plus young men and women worldwide. It has an impact on health, education, family, resilience, and quality of life. It is a man-made disaster, which has ramifications not just for the young men and women directly affected, but also their families who they support, and in the long term - their community and national development.
Many of the young citizens we support are demanding dignified jobs. They need the space to raise issues such as a lack of benefits and welfare and be given provisions such as social protection, better training, accountability forums for youth unemployment funds and open access to data.
These young people are fed up with being pushed back, short term contracts, poor education, cronyism, patriarchy, patronage systems and not being heard.
Our magazine (PDF) demonstrates the intellect and capabilities of young men and women (many of whom are unemployed) in Bangladesh and Uganda who participated at two ‘Design-a-Thon’ workshops earlier this year. These workshops aimed at exploring creative solutions to tackling the social injustice of youth unemployment. But beyond this, the workshops sought to create a platform to support these young people to reinstate a sense of self belief.
Youth are not to blame: they are not simply idle, incapable nor passive. They are questioning, provocative, courageous and keen to contribute, build and re-imagine.
We hope that national governments and donors will include youth from diverse backgrounds in future planning, strategising, implementing and review of any youth unemployment funds, policies and programmes.
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