Pacific focus on next generation leaders
The Secretariat of the Pacific Community says addressing youth unemployment is a crucial part of its focus on engaging youth in sustainable development.
Transcript
The Secretariat of the Pacific Community says addressing youth unemployment is a crucial part of its focus on engaging youth in sustainable development.
Youth make up more than fifty percent of the region's population but the deputy director of social and economic development at the SPC says there is still a lack of programs addressing youth issues.
Leituala Kuiniselani Toelupe Tago Elisara spoke with Koroi Hawkins about SPC's vision for the region's youth.
LEITUALA KUINISELANI TOELUPE TAGO ELISARA: In August of this year we launched the new "Pacific Youth Development Framework" which is the framework that replaced the "Pacific Youth Strategy". Work on this framework seeks to coordinate all existing efforts at regional level on youth development and it also seeks to explore opportunities within SPC, so that we can get some mainstream youth development across the various programs that SPC delivers. It has always been the approach that youth development issues should be mainstreamed across SPC programs. And this is in addition to continuation of the specific youth development programs that this division is tasked with.
KOROI HAWKINS: Can you see this already happening or can you give an example of in country examples that are already working towards this or are already achieving this?
LE: Already in SPC there is a Youth at Work program that is being delivered out of our Solomon Islands country office and this includes a number of sectors health, agriculture, environment in terms of climate change. This is one program that's already started to mainstream youth across different sectors. We have also made some attempts internally in the context of youth and agriculture where we have tried to promote opportunities for youth in agriculture and highlight the fact that young people, a lot of the young people in our region are not employed. And rather than trying to push them to find white collar jobs, why don't we engage them in agriculture and give them skills and build their capacity so that they can generate income and improve their livelihood as they engage in agriculture. There has also been some work with the fisheries division and we intend to do more work with the fisheries division because of the fact that they target young people, the gender dimension of the work on fisheries and so it is important for us to continue to do that.
KH: What is the long term aim here?
LE: Ultimately the long term objective is to ensure that our youth are in a position to lead our region and take on the leadership for development in the region going forward. I would like to think that the work on youth development will continue to be a collective focus for SPC in terms of all the divisions and the programs that we do and recognising the fact that without targeting our future leaders there is no way that we can sustain a lot of the things that we are doing now if we are not targeting the right group.
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