PRAEJEM / Sustainable professional integration of young people into the labour market. Functional support to young entrepreneur in Cote d'Ivoire

Thank you, Pierre, for publishing our article. Adolescents and youth continue presenting their business plans to the jury in Ivory Coast but also in Burkina Faso and Mali. They are very excited because even when this is an important moment to asses if eventual micro-financial services would be available for them, the activity itself of preparing themselves and defending their project is already a big step. These are young people most of the time related to the informal economy who are rarely confronted to formal organizations like microfinances agencies. We observe that they keep gathering knowledge by putting themselves in this situation.

On the other hand, successful candidates will also benefit from tools kits and some basic equipment provided by the project for them to start their own business. We foresee at least 300 young people in the three countries who will benefit from these kits and support from the project to be able to success as new entrepreneurs.

The Regional Project in Support of Children and Young workers Migrants (PRAEJEM) in Côte d’Ivoire aims at identifying young migrants and, according to their preference, at inserting them as apprentices with master craftsmen. The support to these adolescents and youth is logically extended to the training and support to business creation, provided that at the end of their apprenticeship, all of them cannot stay as wageworkers in the workshops where they earned the craft. Furthermore some of these young migrants may have already been trained in a craft and the support for business creation is then required. Among the difficulties that can be encountered in such actions, there are two main drifts to be avoided: the first one requires to be careful not to create excessive competition in markets that are already overcrowded and the second is not to give the impression to favour a category of population (the young migrants) compared to another (the youth in general) that in similar contexts may be seen as disadvantaged.

Good luck to Save the Children for the pursuit of their project.

I totally agree with these two main challenges mentioned by Jacques. I share here some thoughts:

Fistly, not to create excessive competition in markets: I believe that having a rigorous market survey before starting activities with youth is essential. In PRAEJEM, this study was carried out in 2016, focusing on analyzing both offer and demand. At this point we realized that vulnerable youth in our countries choose sectors strongly influenced by gender and tradition (family, community, etc.) and less based on market needs. That is why we trained our staff in the field and other stakeholders (local social services) in order for them to understand basic market functioning and how important is to also take into account market needs. Then, they could work to encourage and motivate youth to consider market possibilities when it comes to decide the sector where they want to work/be trained. Furthermore, we also encouraged youth to take part in our literacy classes to complement their technical skills learning (according to our baseline study 55% of potential beneficiaries couldn’t read and write). We recently found out through an internal survey that these literacy courses have had a great impact in terms of autonomy improvement and self-confidence (we will share the survey on IESF platform). We believe that it’d be worth to follow up in the long-term and see if these complementary actions carried out by the project (literacy and technical skills simultaneously) also have long-term impact in terms of youth lives including more informed and more profound analysis when it comes to decision-making.      

Concerning the second point, not to give the impression to favor a category of population (the young migrants) compared to another (the youth in general), this is also very important. This was highlighted to us in the beginning of the project and it helped us to be more accurate when defining the criteria to be able to benefit from project activities. One of the more important consequences was that the project should work with migrants at departure, transit and destination. In the case of departure, it meant that vulnerable youth candidates (with high potential) to go on dangerous migration could also benefit from project activities. On the other hand, we developed a big project component of awareness raising activities about risks associated to dangerous migration. These two points (working at departure and strong awareness rising activities) helped us not to be seen as “discriminatory” and not having important challenges with local communities when it comes work with vulnerable (potential) migrants. To conclude, we encourage projects working to improve livelihoods in the informal economy of vulnerable migrants to always introduce awareness rising activities and consider those youth with high potential to go on risky migration.