TIMOR-LESTE: Snipping Away at Youth Unemployment
In a small city where most of the 22,000 inhabitants rely on subsistence farming to put food on the table, one young woman has gone against the grain with a business venture that embodies the changing times in Timor-Leste, South-east Asia's newest and poorest nation.
'I've felt a big change compared with before, because now I can save money from my own business and I can save it in the bank,' said 20-year-old Eugenia Cardoso, who in June opened a beauty salon in Maliana, western Timor-Leste. 'Every month I take some of the money to pay myself, but not all of it. I also try to support my younger brother to send him to school. I try and put money in the bank to help my future.'
'I had nothing to do before, so when I heard an announcement to attend training to learn about running a salon, I jumped at the opportunity. I learned lots of techniques, so I was really excited about starting a business. I really want to help other people now, to teach them how to develop their own business,' Cardoso added.
Like many others in Timor-Leste who live outside capital Dili, Cardoso finished school and found herself lost in a sea of young people looking for jobs outside the agricultural sector.
About 80 percent of Timor-Leste's population of 1.1 million resides in rural areas, living off the land and engaged in subsistence agriculture, while youth employment is about 35 percent in urban areas. The government has been trying to diversify income-generating activities by moving away from subsistence farming to market agriculture or entirely new trades.
But Timorese youths are still putting the pieces together in the wake of 2006 violence that ripped through Dili and led to the displacement of 150,000 people. High youth unemployment, which was a major factor in that conflict, is hampering economic development and posing a threat to internal stability, according to the United Nations.
'Socio-economic factors that fuelled the 2006 crisis — land and property regimes, a large youth population and high levels of unemployment — have not improved much and will take many years to address,' said the Report of the Secretary-General on U.N. Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) in 2009.
Formal independence for tiny Timor-Leste came in 2002 after a bloody 24-year occupation by the Indonesian military, but periodic spurts of violence have hindered progress. With the nation now the most peaceful than it has been for years, the need to provide jobs for young people has never been greater.
Cardoso was a beneficiary of Jovem Iha Serbisu (JOIN), a youth employment programme led by the Secretariat of State for Vocational Training and Employment (SEFOPE) in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
'Our focus is on young people,' said Susan Slattery, an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development working with SEFOPE in Maliana who has been keeping an eye on Cardoso's progress.
Slattery says SEFOPE works closely with non-government groups and has a government fund, the Fund for Employment and Vocational Training (FEFOP), that can help jobless young people through different models.
'One thing we do, for example, is support groups producing tofu and tempe. The fund pays for all of that. Groups do work experience, internships, vocational training. ILO helps the government develop materials for training. We also work with students and get them to start thinking about what they are going to do in the future,' she said.
Cardoso travelled to Dili to take part in an intensive three-month training course along with 11 other young people from around the country. Once the training was finished, she traveled back to Maliana and opened her salon the next day.
The young beautician then rallied her family and friends to help spread the word and quickly establish a customer base that now brings in up to 100 U.S. dollars a month, putting Cardoso in a sturdy position in a country where 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
It may not look like much — a small room with a single mirror, chair and basin next to her family's kiosk selling drinks and snacks — but Cardoso's salon is a beacon of hope in an otherwise sleepy city that normally only has electricity at night.
'JOIN is a good way of supporting youths because unemployment is so high in Timor-Leste. Many youths don't continue with their studies after they finish secondary school. Through programmes like this, they can start a business and then expand and eventually even employ other people,' said Alexandrina Gama, chief of SEFOPE’s self- employment department.
JOIN is part of SEFOPE's four-year, 18 million-dollar Youth Employment Promotion programme, which the government says is equipping young people with skills they can use for work, said Isabel Fernandes de Lima, chief secretariat of INDMO.
'People usually farm, but when they want to do other things, it depends on what kind of industries there are in the district. Some training providers provide good training in areas like construction, but after that, sometimes it's difficult for people to create their own jobs and put their skills into practice,' she said.
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service