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This blog is a global conversation among young people on poverty and other development-related issues. It's maintained by the World Bank's Youthink! team

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Employment

Essay Competition: Youth Entrepreneurship in Times of Crisis

Submitted by Saadia Iqbal on September 1, 2009 - 12:19

Did you know that in many regions, unemployment among youth is easily 2-3 times higher than for adults. Especially in developing countries, the school-to-work transition can be a long and tedious process, during which young people leave school, become jobless and spend time moving between unemployment, inactivity and informal employment. In fact, youth have often been found to effectively act as a "buffer," absorbing shocks disproportionately during negative business cycles, but not benefiting accordingly during economic booms.
What is it like for youth in your country? And is the global financial crisis impacting the situation still further? 

The World Bank's Y2Y Global Youth Conference is holding an essay contest on this topic, and wants your ideas on the questions: 

What are the constraints to youth entrepreneurship in your country? Has the global crisis changed the dynamics? How can governments help young entrepreneurs to create and further develop their social and productive ventures?

For more info, visit the Y2Y Community website.

Beyond “teaching a man how to fish…”

Submitted by Saptarshi Pal on August 6, 2009 - 11:50

My first brush with business was at the age 11, when I started selling stickers/posters in school. It was a great experience, although short-lived, and I regard it a milestone as I realized what I wanted to be when I “grow up!”

At the age of 15, I started working on environmental projects in Kolkata. This was another great experience, the summary of which can be found here, where we had to come up with revenue-generating projects to support our numerous activities.

I realized that entrepreneurship was probably the best solution to address most of our social concerns. Personally, I am not attracted to NGOs as most of them are unsustainable (lack of funds, inefficient) in the long run and hence have a high mortality rate.

What would YOU like to see at the 2009 Global Youth Conference?

Submitted by Saadia Iqbal on July 29, 2009 - 16:28

The annual Global Youth Conference is organized by the World Bank's Y2Y group. For this year's conference (scheduled for October 22, 2009 in Washington, DC) the organizers want to hear from you! What would you like to see at the conference this year? Is there an issue you are passionate about and do you want to hear from a particular speaker?

Women and Agriculture

Submitted by Stacy Alcantara on July 10, 2009 - 09:48

It was a funny experience, really, but a point worth pondering. When we asked a group of children to describe a farmer, all of them immediately said that a farmer was a man who planted and harvested crops in a field or a farm. Naturally, the definition, although simplistic, did make sense. But the point of the matter is that none of the children ever pictured the farmer as a woman.

Notes from the heartland of industrialization…

Submitted by Christine Cassar on July 6, 2009 - 12:09

From the little island of Malta, I now blog from Ann Arbor, Michigan—my home for the Northern hemispheric summer… The links between the two distant spots date back to organized emigration programs, where hundreds were encouraged to take the trip to the empire of Henry Ford and other production lines in search of greater and better opportunities.

I have landed in what is certainly a very different socio-economic picture. Malta and Michigan seem to have little in common apart from the presence of a Maltese community here and a spate of returned migrants from the US whose houses fly the stars and stripes on what is now the “other side” of the Atlantic. Yet these economically successful migrants are a generation dying out.

Money or Art?

Submitted by Christine Sedky on June 1, 2009 - 16:32

So when I started to work with the khayameya I realized that my intention and the intentions of the khayameya workers were different. Not different in that we couldn’t agree, but just coming from different perspectives, which in the end turned out to be complementary. I had this idealistic, ambitious vision of simultaneously retaining craftsmanship, reviving cultural heritage, creating employment opportunities, etc…. For them, it is simply a source of income. Many are gifted in the craft, some tell me it is their favorite time of day when they work, and for others it's just work. But they don’t do it for idealistic reasons, they do it because they have inherited or been taught a way of living. So for Ayadi’s work to be successful we had to bridge the workers' perspectives as well as the vision of Ayadi. 

Decisions, decisions…

Submitted by Christine Sedky on May 27, 2009 - 16:44

My first 6 weeks of officially working for Ayadi Organization I did on-the-ground research of various crafts around Egypt.  I was looking to find a craft that has been passed down for hundreds of years and that would benefit from working with Ayadi.  My vision was not to create something new.  I didn’t want something redundant or to recreate the wheel if it had already been created and spinning, but rather to build on others' work and make more impact. 

To name just a few of the beautiful craftsmanship that are part of  Egypt's rich and dying cultural heritage, I saw glass being hand-blown in the City of the Dead in Cairo, pottery in Fayoum (1.5 hours from Cairo), mother-of-pearl boxes being cut and assembled, etc….  Every time I saw a new craftsman at work I wanted to work with him.  But of course to be realistic and to have impact, I decided to start with one craft for a 6-month pilot project, and then expand or reassess. 

The Gender Perspective

Submitted by Stacy Alcantara on May 21, 2009 - 10:22

Today’s global financial crisis is very much reminiscent of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.  With the exports and labor-intensive industries being hit harder than Banda Aceh was with the tsunami that swept through its coasts, women were the most adversely affected.  This was because of the strong gender composition of many of the most vulnerable industries today.

One Big Step

Submitted by Stacy Alcantara on May 14, 2009 - 03:01

In the Philippines, men and women may still not have achieved equality, but the condition of women in this Southeast Asian country is way better compared to that in Nepal. Whereas women in the Philippines can almost compete neck to neck with men for executive positions and plum jobs, in Nepal, many women have found it hard not just to break the glass ceiling but to actually join the paid labor force.

what i do...and who i am...

Submitted by Christine Sedky on May 2, 2009 - 09:27

For many years I had this dream that I would be working to retain traditional craftsmanship among poor artisans in Egypt. I decided to make a leap and see if I as one individual could make a difference in the country where I was born, Egypt.  I created a nonprofit, Ayadi (which means many hands in Arabic) and am now in Cairo trying to retain traditional craftsmanship in Cairo. 

Why traditional craftsmanship?  In developing countries the focus is on basic needs: housing, food, health, etc.  And when a segment of the population is not receiving these basic needs, many times art is considered a luxury. I am hoping to retain the beautiful handcrafted legacy of Egypt by providing a way for poor people to be able to create income through the gift of their craftsmanship which has been handed down for centuries. The basic idea is to use an empowering development mechanism of partnership and employment, to simultaneously retain traditional craftsmanship and provide a source of income-generation for poor artisans. 

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