Statisticians have it that in Belize 28% of the population is between the ages of 15 and 29 years old. That's some 70,000 young persons in the country. It is believed that in the region of 9,500 of these youths are unemployed. But if a new program called Entra 21 has its way that number will be significantly reduced over the next year and a half. A collaborative effort between the Youth for the Future, the University of Belize, the Belize Business Bureau and the IDB will see the implementation of the program specifically targeting youths to make them acquire skills to make them more employable. Here's a story.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
With representation by all partner agencies involved, the Entra 21 program was officially launched. The implementing body: the University of Belize's Dr. Geraldo Flowers explained that the project will see the training of 300 at risk youth.
Dr. Geraldo Flowers,
"We would like to over the next 18 months to train and find employment for 300 young people, unemployed young people in Belize, so that we will provide them with information technology, customer service, job preparedness, and internship training over a period of 18 months so that at the end we will be able to find these young people job placements and employment and they will become beneficial and productive citizens of Belize.
We've structured it so that it's a partnership between Youth for the Future, the Belize Business Bureau, and the University if Belize in which Youth for the Future will work primarily with the University in recruiting and selecting the young people and the Business Bureau and other organizations, that we hope to bring in, such as the BTIA and the BTB, these other organizations will work with us to find internships for the young people during the period of training and also to place these young people in jobs after the training."
That training will see the selection of 75 young persons from the Stann Creek, Toledo, Cayo and Belize districts. The selection will be done through Youth for the Future.
Linsford Castillo,
"Youth for the Future in close collaboration with UB's adult and continuing education department and BBB will be responsible to recruit and select young trainees to participate in this training."
With the selection done the training will take place in collaboration with the University of Belize. Today UB's President Dr. Corinth Morter Lewis emphasized the importance of preparing those 300 youths for job placement at a time when they would not ordinarily have been afforded it.
Dr. Corinth Morter-Lewis,
"This partnership will allow us to address some of our sustainable development challenges by helping to provide some three hundred youths with essential information technology skills. We must prepare now to identify businesses who will be willing to hire them when they have completed their training. This Entra-12 program is only one of strong initiatives in education in Belize and like the TVETT program being promoted countrywide, is designed to provide our youths with the skills they need for a productive career."
Linsford Castillo,
"Let us all seek to take advantage of this opportunity, not just for us, but for the sake of our nation's youths. As the saying goes, 'we cannot always prepare a future for our youth, but we can always prepare our youth for the future.'"
And while the preparation is all for the youths to be ready for the future, the funding agency IDP's Rodrigo Mayen-Giron says that the training falls in line with the bank's objectives of poverty alleviation in the region.
Rodrigo Mayen-Giron, IDB
"The bank is pleased to have served as the vehicle to provide the assistance that will promote unified efforts to address the unemployment problem among youths in Belize. This project falls within the bank's framework for social inclusion and poverty reduction, areas to which the bank's president is very committed and which will provide the citizens of our member countries with the necessary tools to become more competitive and increase the job opportunities."
The Entra 21 program will see students receive 3 months in information technology training, 1 month in customer service and 1 month internship. It has financing of $260,800 from the IDB and technical assistance from Taiwan.
