Project description

Title: Promotion of the Development Capacity of Youths and Young Adults
Commissioned by: Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ)
Country: Sierra Leone
Lead executing agency: Ministry of Education
Overall term: February 2007 to January 2011

Context

Sierra Leone, despite its rich mineral resources, is an extremely poor country. Following the ten-year civil war, its development potential lies fallow. The illiteracy rate is high by international standards and the education sector has collapsed; macro-level social problem-solving strategies have broken down, and the national private sector has atrophied, as have economic development initiatives at the grassroots level. Unemployment is especially high, particularly among the country’s youth. The few vocational training opportunities available are too little oriented to actual demand and to the jobs on offer. Without a fundamental general education and the skills sought in the employment market, neither the revival of the economy and society nor the economic and social integration of young people is conceivable.

Objective

Disadvantaged youths and young adults are integrated in their community through social, economic and political activities.

Approach

The programme’s non-formal education programme is oriented to the needs of youths and young adults in rural areas. These needs are determined on the basis of the capacity of various employment sectors to absorb job-seekers. The programme offers its services in four components:

• Apprenticeships in community training centres (five district level centres promoted)
• Community-based teaching of functional literacy in conjunction with relevant employment or income-generating activities (25 centres promoted in village communities)
• Socio-educational counselling of young people in community training centres and in literacy-teaching measures linked to micro-projects
• Capacity-building at all levels: ministries, district administrations, school committees, non-governmental organisations, youth social workers, and tradespeople 

Vocational training and functional literacy curricula are reconfigured and oriented to the market, i.e. to the demands of the job market and the sales market for the products and services of self-employed entrepreneurs. The curricula are devised in cooperation with education ministry and university experts and are strongly aligned with the demands of economic reality. Basic education and functional literacy programmes are to impart the skills the learners need to sustainably solve their survival problems. The work is based on the results of the National Employment Survey conducted in 2006 as part of the programme for Promotion of Employment for Marginalised Youths. It contains information about the employment sectors with the most job potential and the skills they require.

Within the functional literacy programme, 25 communities in five districts are supported in forming interest groups in categories such as youth, women or cross-generation. The objective is to find a common solution to local problems hampering economic activities. First, food production to meet immediate needs is to be restored. The potential production of agricultural export products is also to be increased. The communities are to find out what obstacles hinder production and integration of their products into local and foreign markets. These may be organisational or financial problems whose causes can be lack of infrastructure or unfavourable power balances between political authorities and the population, between cities and rural areas or between farmers and merchants.

The programme supports the communities through organisational training, transfer of technical and business management expertise, the repair of access roads, transport organisation, lobbying, and mobilisation of financial resources other than programme funds. Learning to read and write thus serves the population as an instrument for devising effective solutions to their economic problems.

At present information is being gathered about suitable locations for the planned 25 literacy centres in five districts. Criteria include strategic position in a place that serves its greater surroundings, population figures, homogeneity of target groups, infrastructures, conflict potential, and the extent to which the population is structured.