“OUR LEGACY IS EVERY YOUTH’S LIFE WE HAVE TOUCHED”

Youth are empowered to engage in professions of their choice

1. Increasing knowledge of industrial and service sector jobs as dignified professional careers, so the general community perception is positively changed through increased awareness.

Our Work readiness program is based upon the market assessment, done to indicate demand for skilled employees and skill gaps in the workforce- development system as well as viable employment opportunities for youths, in the formal and informal sectors. Having identified employers across a number of sectors, skill needs, constraints of obtaining skills and perceptions on hiring youths we have developed a sound demand driven, deeply community-rooted work readiness program which has provided ample opportunities over 300 youths within three years.

2. Youth aged 15-24 are able to make well-informed decisions on their life’s ambition and target through chosen career paths for their economic transformation.

Career based teaching and learning environment create highly motivated youths. Therefore effective career guidance program commencing within the school itself is built to our work readiness program in view of providing best career directions towards economic transformation. Using the latest youth career guidance approaches, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, psychometric tools and partnering with the National Career Guidance Association youths are provided with opportunities to identify their profession of choice. Our career guidance program has reached over 600 youths who are schooling and non-schooling youth resulted in reducing youth unemployment by 4 % in VOICE operating area.

3. Changing social environment including peer groups, family, school, training institution, workplaces towards the dignity of employment in industrial and service sectors.

Social perceptions of a certain profession play a pivotal role in youth involvement in it. Communities in VOICE operating areas degrade Private Sector jobs in compared to Government Sector Jobs due to dignity, job security, and social status prejudices. These prejudiced perceptions are deeply rooted among parents, community leaders, opinion makers, and even youth. Baseline Surveys and our studies on perceptions have proved this is the most influential contributing factor for the shortages in the labor participation in Puttalam District. In order to change this scenario, our work readiness program included youth mobilization strategies governed by social marketing approaches. We were able to change the perceptions of jobs in Tourism Sector by mobilizing over 200 youths to careers with demanded skills.