Asia overview

Asia is an extremely diverse region, home to people from a huge mix of cultures, religions and languages. 

Two-thirds of the world’s poorest people live in Asia, with 800 million people surviving on less than a dollar a day. The issues vary widely across the region, but as a minimum, poor people need access to basic healthcare and education as well as livelihood opportunities.

According to the UN, 61.5% of the world’s young people live in Asia, and despite the regions’ booming economy, the majority face extreme poverty characterised by short life expectancy, low literacy and high levels of malnutrition. Young people are severely disadvantaged through a lack of access to basic education and skills training. Participation of young people in civic life is extremely limited and this leads to disengagement, typified by a lack of involvement in public institutions.

The increasing prevalence of HIV and AIDS is a huge challenge with an estimated 1.2 million people infected with HIV and 8.2 million currently living with the disease. Young people form a large proportion of those infected and affected, yet awareness levels are still very low. The region is also regularly devastated by disasters; frequent floods, drought, cyclones and earthquakes have a huge immediate impact, as well as drastically slowing long-term development.

What are we doing?

Y Care International has worked in Asia since 1984. We support a variety of projects that are implemented by YMCAs in the region. Common to these is the recognition that in order to address issues of poverty facing young people, their families and communities need to be active participants in their own development.

In addition to long-term development work, we have responded to the frequent disasters that have occurred in the region, including the earthquakes in Gujarat in 2001 and Pakistan in 2005, as well as the devastating Tsunami in 2004.

The projects we support focus on two major areas of need for young people:

• increasing awareness of HIV and AIDS and consequently decreasing vulnerability, as well as supporting those that are already infected or affected

• technical vocational training, life skills and entrepreneurship development, improving livelihood opportunities

The projects work with the most vulnerable young women and men who are living in severe poverty. In particular they target the most marginalised groups such as those:

• living in rural areas
• discriminated against due to caste
• in danger due to living on the street
• at risk due to operating as sex workers

The response to the Tsunami continues; following rehabilitation and reconstruction interventions in India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, we are now supporting local YMCAs to implement a long-term development programme in the affected communities. This will focus on the development of vocational skills, enabling young people to access employment or small enterprise opportunities to build a sustainable livelihood for the future.

In India, we supported the YMCAs of Mangalore and Marthandam in instigating pioneering and challenging work on HIV and AIDS awareness with commercial sex workers. This was not only ground-breaking work for the YMCA but also for NGOs in that region. The success of this intervention has been shared with other YMCAs in India and has led to a broader network of YMCAs undertaking similar activities with sex workers and other marginalised groups.