Promoting livelihood opportunities for rural youth - IFAD

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BOX 4 The San Francisco Agricultural School in Paraguay The San Francisco Agricultural School is run by the Fundacion Paraguaya. The school’s curriculum combines the teaching of traditional high-school subjects and technical skills with the running of 17 small-scale rural enterprises, most of which are based on the school’s campus. All enterprises are strictly based on existing market demands and, for this reason, the income generated from them covers all the running costs of the school, including teacher salaries and depreciation. All of its students are productively engaged either in wage employment or self-employment within four months of graduation. Teacher accountability is very high because their own salaries are directly dependent on the immediate success of the school’s enterprises (ILO, 2008). the countrywide rural training and business support organization, SENAR, in Brazil. The key challenges in providing high-quality training and extension services for rural youth are low educational levels, poor learning outcomes, scattered populations, low effective demand (from both the self-employed and employers) and limited scope for costrecovery. Church organizations and NGOs have supported much of the vocational training for rural school leavers in many developing countries, but funding constraints have resulted in significantly reduced enrolments in many countries during the last decade. The stigma attached to vocational and technical education is another major issue in most countries. Poor employment outcomes are a common weakness of rural training programmes. For example, about one-half of the young people who participated in the India-wide Training of Rural Youth for Self-Employment have been unable to find employment. However, some training initiatives have been very successful. Farmer Field Schools in East Africa and the Fundacion Paraguaya are notable examples (see boxes 3 and 4). In Uganda, the Programme for the Promotion of the Welfare of Children and Youth has provided good quality training, particularly in remote rural and war affected areas. Colombia and Nicaragua also have successful rural training programmes for youth. The capacity of service providers to support rural clienteles, especially rural youth, in all key sectors – such as education, health, policing, justice, rural infrastructure and agricultural extension – needs to be strengthened significantly in most countries, which has major implications for higher education and training systems. Agricultural education at all levels also needs to be revitalized. 19
Training and capacity-building activities now comprise an important component of IFAD-supported activities and absorb up to 30 per cent of resources in some projects. Since key target groups are often illiterate or have little formal schooling, this presents additional challenges for providing effective training. A good example of IFAD support in this area is the Skills Enhancement for Employment Project in western Nepal, which targets Dalit and other seriously disadvantaged rural youth. The project has an ambitious goal of ensuring that 70 per cent of all trainees are in productive employment after six months. The project is implemented by ILO and is based on the ILO’s Training for Economic Empowerment methodology, which is firmly rooted in participatory planning approaches and market-driven enterprise development. The Prosperer project in Madagascar is another good example of a new generation of youth-oriented projects being funded by IFAD. It seeks to improve the income of disadvantaged, poor youth in three regions of the country by providing diversified income-generating opportunities and promoting entrepreneurship in rural areas. A total of 8,000 young people will be supported over the next five years. Access to land and natural resources and land tenure security lie at the heart of all rural societies and agricultural economies and are central to rural poverty eradication. Growing populations, declining soil fertility and increasing environmental degradation, the HIV/AIDS pandemic and new opportunities for agricultural commercialisation, have all heightened demands and pressures on land resources and placed new pressures on land tenure systems, often at the expense of poor people and vulnerable groups such as women and youth. In many developing countries inheritance remains the main means for young people to access land. Typically, though, it is sons who inherit land, and daughters only gain access to land through marriage. Ongoing subdivision of land through inheritance has resulted in fragmented and unviable land parcels and increasingly the youth are becoming landless. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has resulted in increasing land grabbing of widows’ and orphans’ lands by male relatives of the deceased, particularly in Africa. Increasing landlessness amongst the youth has resulted in an increase in inter-generational conflicts over land. Lasting solutions to land tenure insecurity of the youth could include: the strengthening of legislation and legal services to women and youth in order to recognize and defend their rights to land; the development of land markets as mechanisms for accessing land; and perhaps most importantly, the identification and promotion of off-farm economic activities that target the youth. Young people tend to view agriculture as an unsatisfactory option unless they have secure control over family lands. In the United Republic of Tanzania, as part of the national action plan for youth employment, labour intensive rural infrastructure development has been actively supported among youth groups in ‘green belts’ around major urban centres. The programme has also supported youth to own land by allocating areas for youth infrastructure development and enacting laws to protect youth from discrimination in leasing land. Financial capital – microfinance and enterprise development As the 2005 World Youth Report points out “entrepreneurship is not for everyone and so cannot be viewed as a large-scale solution to the youth employment crisis”. Nonetheless, there is growing interest in the targeted provision of micro-finance for youth, because it is recognized that, education and training do not on their own usually lead to sustainable self-employment. To date, however, services in this area remain limited. Numerous problems have been encountered in pilot projects. The lack of control of loans 20
Page 1 and 2: Investing in the future Creating op
Page 3 and 4: Table of contents Introduction 4 Wh
Page 5 and 6: Introduction This paper 1 reviews t
Page 7 and 8: A worker packages decorative plants
Page 9 and 10: Who are rural youth? Age and locati
Page 11 and 12: Key features of rural youth livelih
Page 13 and 14: Future labour demand in rural areas
Page 15 and 16: Improving youth livelihoods in rura
Page 17 and 18: According to the sustainable liveli
Page 19: BOX 3 Farmer Field Schools in East
Page 23 and 24: A young man makes and repairs shoes
Page 25 and 26: Partnerships to promote youth rural
Page 27 and 28: Concluding remarks The urgent need
Page 29 and 30: References Amin, S. (2008) Enhancin
Page 31: 30 International Fund for Agricultu

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