The last time we told you about a Youth for the Future Job Preparedness Workshop was in June when 60 unattached youths were prepping to head to the hills of Chalillo to work on the dam. As we all know that didn't go as planned as when the youths reached the site they were turned back by the site manager. Well they say you learn from your experience and today 25 youths began training in life skills, personal development, and again job skills. Violence Reduction Unit Coordinator Douglas Hyde told us this time around part of the training is teaching these youths who have had a lifetime of rejection to deal with one more "no."
Douglas Hyde, Coordinator VRU
"Youth for the Future recognizes that consistency is one of the things that we have with our young persons, especially when it comes to development or empowerment and information. We believe that every month we must have at least two trainings to continue train these young persons in job readiness. Something is working in terms of the approaches we are using here at Youth for the Future. One of the things is setting that person's heart and mind together. We realize both from the community and the workplace that it is working. They are saying that the young people's mentality are changing, their appearance is looking better, and we are hearing from the community which is their mothers, their neighbors, and their girlfriends that they are seeing some definite changes in these young persons so the changes are working."
Keith Swift,
How do you prepare these trainees for rejection on the job site?
Douglas Hyde,
"What we try to encourage is that a failure today is not the end of the world. A failure today is a beginning of a new challenge so they have to wake up tomorrow and go out again. The training helps them to build that within themselves and to not get angry, give up, explode, and to just not go off on the place. They accept that today is not their day but tomorrow might be so they have to get up and go again to find another place."
The workshop continues tomorrow with presentations from the Youth Enhancement Services on personal development, human development department on job readiness, and PASMO on HIV and Aids. There is some good news as 5 females from Youth for the Future have already been hired and a commitment has been made to hire another 25.
