Stain Villumstad, the Country Representative for Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) in Malawi, made memorable and strategic remarks during the graduation ceremony of the first 19 cohorts of youth who completed a six-month social entrepreneurship training at the M & M Training and Consultancy Institute. This institution continues to drive our effort in preventing human trafficking among the youth.
He believes that innovative skill development for youth is an asset that promotes opportunities which can sustain livelihood among young people and prevent exposure to human trafficking.
He also observed that many countries in Africa face increased rates of unemployment especially among the youth.
Villumstad says that despite several approaches and initiatives by governments in Africa, little change seems to be registered, thereby calling for joint efforts amongst all stakeholders.
“There is still room for change and what we need to do is by first changing the mentality that many people have that they cannot create jobs by themselves but rather wait for others to open opportunities for them. Despite that I am not an entrepreneur myself, I still see many business opportunities that our youth could pick up and make a living out of them in Africa. What it means therefore is that the youth have a chance to turn things around if they can be able to identify the various opportunities and get themselves engaged,” Villumstad explained.
Apart from lack of jobs, he also noted the inexistence of soft loans and high bank interest rates as another setback for vulnerable youth and women to engage themselves into productive businesses.
This, he said, scares the youth and called on the governments in Africa to find possible means of helping out the booming number of unemployed youths.
“We also need to give the youth necessary knowledge and skills than the traditional which is irrelevant to the market demand,” he said.
Villumstad then commended M & M Training and Consultancy Institute for organising the training which he said offers a new dimension in the way youth should think and at the same time provides new skills for exploring business opportunities.
“Let me applaud M & M Training and Consultancy Institute for the training which enabled our youth to obtain the necessary skills and make them the new contributors to the country’s change.”
I concur with Villumstad, knowing that many youths have been trained for the white-collar jobs than the blue-collar jobs.
I have noted with concern that the absence of innovation training contributes to the increasing rates of jobless youth as they cannot create jobs for themselves. Instead of looking for ordinary employers or job markets that are almost full, there is a need for the youth to think outside of the box and create jobs for themselves.
M & M Training and Consultancy Institute’s goal for social entrepreneurship training that I established is to build skills, knowledge and social entrepreneurship among young people using entrepreneurship practice to better inform theory in the contexts of self-development and to highlight the role of social actors and social entrepreneurs in bringing about concrete changes.
