Investing in young people’s education, health and employment will ensure better prospects for their own lives and the nation.
Permanent Secretary for Youth and Sports Mr. Jone Maritino Nemani made the remarks while opening the “Workshop on Youth Work in the Pacific: Professionalizing Youth Work” at the University of the South Pacific (USP) on Monday this week.
Coordinated and hosted by the Pacific Centre for Flexible and Open Learning for Development (PACFOLD) at USP in collaboration with the Commonwealth Higher Education Consortium for Youth Work (Commonwealth of Learning, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the University of the West Indies), the workshop includes participants from 8 South Pacific countries including Fiji.
The week long workshop’s main objective is to expose participants to trends, theories and case studies on youth work and facilitate a participatory environment to share participants’ experiences on youth work from the South Pacific region. The overall motive is to develop courses on Youth Work that will be offered by USP and gather feedback from prospective learners on the suitability of content and suitability of online delivery.
“Commensurately, PACFOLD/USP will be able to better curate and contextualize courses for their partners throughout the region after this workshop,” Mr. Nemani said.
Mr. Nemani adds that the workshop carries significant importance for the youths of the South Pacific as a proportion of the population, young people in Commonwealth Pacific Island States range from 43 percent in Fiji to 54 percent in the Solomon Islands, yet participation rates in secondary schooling is largely uneven.
“In Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, for example, participation rates are approximately 50 percent of the age cohort. The International Labor Organization reports that across the South Pacific, youth unemployment is estimated at 23 percent,” he said. “Although there is a potential demographic dividend for these countries, the current education and economic conditions are in need of greater investment, support and production.”
“To address this particular challenge, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is working with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the University of the West Indies as part the Commonwealth Higher Education Consortium for Youth Work (CHEC4YW) to augment the professional capacity of individuals employed in Youth Work,” he adds.
“The goal is for COL and PACFOLD/USP endeavor to ascertain the aspiration of varying ministries, NGOs and related organizations to augment the professional capacity of youth workers to partake in courses to be offered by USP on youth work.”
“So the aim of the workshop is to develop short online courses using the resources developed by the University of the West Indies – for the South Pacific region and engage with relevant partners to ensure the courses will meet the needs of youth workers,” PS Nemani explains. “The content of these workshop include the overall aims of the project, an overview of youth work, course design, open education resources, and issues relating to educational transfer, competencies, outcomes, and assessment.”
The workshop are structured in such a way to develop consensus on a vision for a youth work degree program, then articulate desired competencies of graduates, course outlines that would lead to these competencies, and a youth work curriculum complete with expectations, assignments, and assessment that would achieve the stated outcomes.
Professionalization of the field of youth work has emerged as a priority in many countries around the world so that youth might achieve their potential through the support of an enabling social structure and of qualified professionals.
According to the Commonwealth Secretariat, youth work includes “all forms of rights-based youth engagement approaches that build personal awareness and support the social, political and economic empowerment of young people, delivered through non-formal learning within a matrix of care”.
Youth work has societal benefits as well, as quality youth services and institutions can lessen demands on existing service provisions from other sectors, enable greater equity, make other public services more efficient, and encourage national development.
“The vision is for these youth work courses to be locally curated by stakeholders in small states en route to developing localized certificate-, diploma- or degree-granting programs,” Mr. Nemani further explains.
“Such initiative by USP, Commonwealth of Learning and Commonwealth Secretariat by working together can guarantee that all youths in the Pacific region will have knowledge, skills and opportunities to reach full potential,” he concludes.
The workshop concludes on Friday.