Youth – Feeding the future. Addressing the challenges faced by rural youth aged 15 to 17 in preparing for and accessing decent work
Save the Children – Youth in Action Program
Youth in Action is a six-year learning and livelihoods program implemented by Save the Children in partnership with the MasterCard Foundation. The program seeks to improve the socio-economic status of 40,000 rural, out-of-school young people, girls and boys, in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Ethiopia, Malawi and Uganda. Working with local partners, parents, communities and youth, Youth in Action (YiA) supports stakeholders to enhance their existing resources and capacity and build new knowledge and skills in order to strengthen youths’ engagement in their own social and livelihood development and make informed decisions about their future.
Specific challenges rural youth aged 15-17 face (different from those over 18) in making a (current or future) living in agriculture and related activities?*
Land access issues are increasingly tense across age groups and contexts, however for rural African youth who are principally engaged in work on the agriculture value chain, these issues define their capacity to engage in profitable livelihoods activities. As minors, youth under 18 years of age are often unable to legally purchase or rent land, and have almost no financial resources to do so even where the law allows. They are therefore relegated to unpaid or low-paid labor on others’ land, often without opportunities for advancement.
In addition to land access issues, rural youth under 18 years of age across Africa often have negative associations with agricultural livelihoods activities due to the subsistence nature of the bulk of the farming they have been exposed to. The poor agricultural yields they have seen in their families and communities lead young people to believe that agriculture is unprofitable and contributes to their lack of desire to engage in agriculture in the long-term. Many lack access to knowledge of current technology and practices, which are not typically found in school curricula nor in local libraries where they exist. Instead, youth seek to migrate to urban centers, for which they are often unprepared.
Youth below 18 years are excluded from governmental livelihood support programs. A case for Uganda where there is governmental agricultural support program called “Operation wealth creation”. This program targets people who are above 18 year old and thus leave out those below 18 years of age who have dropped out of school and their only hope is to engage in the agricultural sector.
Most of the agriculture policies that are in use today were formulated without proper consultation with youth who are under 18 years of age and thus they exclude their voice and issues that youth face within the agriculture sector. In Malawi the agriculture policy supports agricultural trade fairs as a way of bringing together farmers and exposing them to potential markets. However there is no deliberate measures to include youth below 18 years of age in such events.
There is also a significant gender component to the experiences of youth under the age of 18. Before the age of 18, many African girls in rural areas are married, by choice, force, or coercion; their male counterparts are often engaged in work for wages, but marriage is delayed. Both boys and girls of this age group are typically engaged in work in the non-formal agriculture sector, with little opportunity to enter into the formal sector. They are generally limited to engagement in agricultural related businesses that are close to their homes, like setting up stalls where they can sell vegetables and some food items in close supervision of their parents and care takers. This greatly limits them in accessing the wider markets. Those who are dealing in farming can only rear small animals like rabbits and chicken at a small scale since they have little or no finances to engage in bigger agricultural enterprises. Additionally, as the under-18 cohort is less respected and has no legal autonomy, they are often exploited in one way or another; customers use their influence to insist that young youth provide services or goods on credit, tradespeople provide services or goods of lesser quality, and many underpay. In the worst circumstances, exploitation includes physical and/or sexual abuse.
How can policies and programmes overcome the challenges faced by rural youth in a cost-effective manner? If they target older youth, how could we apply them to support those under 18? Please share relevant examples and lessons from your experience.
The under-18 cohort needs an integrated approach to programming, with opportunities to gain key foundational skills, such as literacy and numeracy, combined with livelihoods training and life skill building activities. The adolescent stage is also an opportune moment to introduce in-depth sexual and reproductive health programming. It is this combination of essential components: education, livelihoods, life skills, and sexual and reproductive health that creates the critical mass of knowledge, skills, and capacity that adolescents need to achieve their full potential as adults.
Save the Children (SC) is addressing these challenges through its YiA program. YiA supports youth from 12 – 18 years, both girls and boys, to identify and explore agriculture related livelihood opportunities through a combination of non-formal educational and practice-oriented learning experiences. The youth go through a minimum of 6 months training where the first three months are centered on acquiring knowledge around literacy, numeracy, markets and businesses skills. The last three months are called the “Action phase”, where youth translate their learning into sustainable livelihoods through pathways of their choice. During this phase, youth under 18 years old are provided with four pathway choices which include; Education, Enterprise, Vocational Training and Apprenticeship. Each youth chooses one pathway and also selects one business within that pathway. The Education pathway provides youth especially those between 12- 14 years with an opportunity to go back to formal school. Enterprise pathway allows youth to start up small businesses within their community and they are supported by local experts. Vocational Training pathway involves youth joining vocational training institutions where they are formally trained in different trades around agriculture and the Apprenticeship pathway links youth to local artisans within their communities to acquire specific skills in different trades.
Lessons learnt:
In all the 5 countries, where Youth in Action is implemented, most youth have chosen the enterprise pathway since it provides an immediate opportunity to start their own businesses. Youth usually start businesses that either one of their family members is engaged in. The program relies a lot on parental and community support. For example in Ethiopia, some parents have matched the livelihood grant the youth receive from the program. Community leaders also play a big role during the youth led procurement process. They go with the youth and help them negotiate prices in the market.
Youth below 18 years, especially girls, tend to engage in agribusinesses that is close to home in order to ensure their own safety. In Egypt, a group of girls were recruited to work in a cloth factory that was out of their community and the company provided transport services however, their parents declined the offer since felt they could not ensure their daughters safety away from home.
Vocational training in most of the countries is formal and includes a myriad of requirements that often prevent youth who are under 18 and/or those have dropped out of school from participating. Most vocational training centers are quite distant from the rural communities so youth either have to join the boarding section or incur high transport costs which their families cannot afford. This prevents access and participation of youth in this category especially the girls whose families rely on them for most of the domestic chores.
There is limited access to markets for youth in their rural communities. Youth have to travel long distances to sell their produce, especially during the weekly markets. In addition, because of their age, youth under the age of 18 do not have access to formal savings institutions and often fear being attacked by thieves on the way back to their villages after a market day.
What are the most binding capacity constraints that you or your institution/organization encounter when designing, implementing and evaluating policies and programmes aiming to address the issues affecting rural youth under the age of 18? What are the data gaps regarding the challenges affecting rural youth employment and livelihoods that you periodically encounter?
Youth who are below 18 years in rural Africa are not allowed to open up a saving account which affects their access to financial services. In Uganda, Egypt, Malawi, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso, the average age of opening up a saving account is 18 years.
People under 18 are minors and they have no right to own land, which is one of the fundamental requirement for one who is interested in on land agriculture activities. Since they usually have little or no financial resources, they can’t rent land neither.
Most of the rural farmers are practicing subsistence farming which doesn’t not generate a lot of income. Therefore, most youth associate agriculture with poverty thus they lose interest in taking part in agriculture. The governmental extensional workers target adults with their services leaving the youth with no new modern agricultural skills.
There are significant data gaps around participation in the non-formal economy, specifically related to wages earned, funding streams, and use of earnings. Additionally the risks associated with underage participation in the non-formal economy is under-researched, specifically the exploitation of this age group.
There are also gaps in data on youth skills, specifically literacy and numeracy skills. These skills may or may not be associated with primary schooling (any at all or completion), and little is known about the skills youth gain in the market itself.
How can education and vocational training in rural areas be improved to support rural adolescents and youth to productively engage in agriculture or related activities? What are the skills and support they need? What does the school-to-work transition for rural youth aged 15-17 look like and what works to effectively support rural youth during this transition?
For rural youth who are under 18 years to actively engage in viable agriculture, there is need to re -brand agriculture within the early education system. For example in Uganda, when students/ pupils have committed a crime at school, they are usually asked to go and dig in the school farm or in teachers gardens. This has been a norm for so many years in that youth grow up with a mentality that agriculture is done by people who have committed a crime. There is need to use youth friendly strategies that can attract them into farming. In addition, there is need to provide access to modern agricultural knowledge and skills within training institutions. Knowledge and skills around high production, processing, financial services available to support youth in agriculture have to be readily available in both urban and rural settings.
The vocational training institutions should create non – formal agriculture related trainings for youth who are out of school. They should set up community technical colleges in the rural areas where youth can access quality practical agro-education trainings. In Malawi, most girls under 18 years of agewho would like to choose the vocational training pathways often don’t because these institutions are out of the communities and it takes 4 months of learning. Adolescent girls cannot afford to be away from their families since they have household responsibilities like taking care of their children, cooking, and cleaning. This greatly hinders their access and participation in vocational training.
The under-18 cohort needs an integrated approach to programming, with opportunities to gain key foundational skills, such as literacy and numeracy, combined with livelihoods training and life skill building activities. The adolescent stage is also an opportune moment to introduce in-depth sexual and reproductive health programming. It is this combination of essential components: education, livelihoods, life skills, and sexual and reproductive health, which creates the critical mass of knowledge, skills, and capacity that adolescents need to achieve their full potential as adults.
What approaches are most effective in overcoming the additional challenges rural youth under the age of 18 face in accessing decent jobs, including (decent) green jobs (e.g. skills mismatch, health and safety conditions, discrimination, exclusion) or becoming entrepreneurs (e.g. barriers in access to finance, producers organizations and markets)?
Provision of non-formal education: most youth under 18 years in rural areas drop out of school earlier and thus they need skills in literacy and numeracy to be successful in their businesses.
Agribusiness mentorship / coaching: for rural youth need to be linked and attached to local experts within their communities so that they can have access to mentors who can share experiences with them but also act as an adult friend they can turn to in case they face challenges within their businesses.
Provision of a small livelihood grants: most youth in the rural areas especially those who are under 18 years face challenges of accessing financial resources due to the high rates of poverty. This affects their ability to start up any viable agricultural business which is a missed opportunity. Small livelihood grants help youth below 18 years to start up small enterprises and this provides them with valuable experience whether business succeeds or not.
Introducing ICT: Mobile phones have become a need for most of the youth both in rural and urban areas, thus this explains why youth are spending their small financial resources to own a mobile phone. This physical asset can help youth access information around markets outside their communities. Here youth will be able to know which produce is demanded and already has market but also knowing the market prices so that they are not cheated by the agriculture brokers. Youth will also use phones to do transactions like saving money but also paying for their business related expenses.
Finally, it is important to remember that youth under 18 years of age do not exist in a vacuum. They are part and parcel of families and communities. Successful youth-focused programming engages families, especially parents, as well as community members at-large. This frequently means catalyzing a shift in opinion of youth so that adults see them as productive members of society. Engaging adults as “youth champions” supports their transition to decent work.
Youth in Action Programme