Life skills and livelihoods

Disadvantaged young people often have very limited basic education and struggle to develop marketable personal and vocational skills.

Formal vocational training and education systems frequently fail to help young people earn a living, rarely offering opportunities to develop practical life skills and receive post-training support. As a result, it is very difficult for them to achieve economic and social independence in adulthood.

Many drift into exploitative and ‘risk’ activities such as sex work, drug use, child labour and participation in gangs and illegal armed groups. There is an urgent need to provide increased and improved skills, informal education and livelihood opportunities to combat high levels of economic inactivity, unemployment and poverty amongst young people worldwide.

Y Care International’s programmes seek to help young people earn income from informal income-generating activities and develop life skills that enhance their livelihood and lifestyle choices. Training focuses on practical and marketable vocational skills and provides support to young people before, during and after training through:

• awareness-raising, skills counselling and skills mentoring
• technical vocational training, life skills and entrepreneurial skills development
• small grants, loans and equipment
• negotiating with and lobbying local employers, institutions and government
• special support for discriminated groups of young people, such as disabled young people, young women, street and working children and former child soldiers
• on-the-job training