Hi. It is a great honour to speak with you today on the situations of children and youth in developing countries and the role Canada can play in the protection and empowerment of children and youth.
Before we begin, I'd like to share with you the story of Shewaye.
Shewaye was orphaned as a child. Her father died of HIV when she was young, and she was forced to live with her uncle outside the capital city of Ethiopia. She became a victim of sexual abuse and ran away when her uncle tried to force her to work in the sex trade.
She found refuge at a shelter through the women, youth, and children’s affairs office of the Ethiopian government. She had no money and no work opportunity, and she had only finished her primary education. The government office is a partner in Street Kids International’s Partnerships For Success Ethiopia project, funded by the Canadian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.
Shewaye took our youth street business course in the fall of 2013. Through our training, she developed a basket-weaving business plan and was successful in receiving a zero-per cent micro-loan of 1,000 birr, which is only around $50 Canadian, in our business plan competition, which was enough to purchase materials and supplies to start her business. She now earns 1,000 birr every three to four weeks, which is enough to cover her living costs for rent, food, school fees, and materials. We have also helped her set up a bank account with the Addis Credit and Savings Institution to save for her future education.
Shewaye is only 16 years old, and she is one of the strongest people I have ever met. Over the past two years I have seen Shewaye’s confidence grow. She has moved into her own home and can now earn enough money to support her younger sister as well. In the future she would like to move back to her village where, she explained, this type of entrepreneurship training is needed for the young people back home.
Our youth is a generation at risk. Young people below the age of 25 account for more than half of the world’s population, and nearly 90% reside in developing countries. There are more than 81 million young people who live on the margins and struggle to make a living for themselves and for their families.
The sad truth is there are few if any jobs available, with a global youth unemployment rate above 12.6% and rising. For some regions, this number can be as high as 30%. This dramatic youth bulge and youth unemployment can have severe economic, social, and political consequences, specifically in low-income countries. Youth underemployment and unemployment highlight the societal failure to utilize a key labour market to foster economic growth.
Low returns to labour as well as high unemployment contribute drastically to poverty. Unemployment continues to expedite a downward spiral of instability as poverty makes it difficult for societies and individuals to invest in education and health and contributes greatly to intergenerational and gender marginalization, abuse, and violence. In such adversities, many children and youth have come to live, work, and beg on the streets. Many have been pushed out or have run away from their homes because of issues of child trafficking, abuse, sexual exploitation, and early and forced marriages, as in the case of Shewaye.
There is also a growing security threat, with a stagnant youth population and a “scarring effect” for youth excluded from the labour market for significantly long periods of time. Youth can become restless; they can become angered and distrust governments, with the possibility of leading to civil unrest and conflict.
The youth livelihood sector may be the biggest challenge today; however, it can also be one of our biggest opportunities.
What Street Kids International has found and learned from marginalized youth over the past 25 years is that this youth population is resilient. They are survivors, in the harshest economic conditions in the world. These youth will engage in all kinds of activities to survive, some healthy and some not, from dignified work to the worst forms of harmful labour.
Whether their actions go in a negative or positive direction largely depends on the young person’s motivation and knowledge and the enabling relationships around them. Hazardous forms of work can have devastating impacts on a young person's life. However, evidence has also shown that it can be highly beneficial to the development and growth of adolescents as they transition into adulthood. When given opportunities for self-sufficiency and self-respect, when this population is empowered with essential economic and development life skills, they can thrive, and they do.
Street Kids International envisions a world in which youth are included in their communities as productive and positive participants, in which they have the skills, abilities, and opportunities to transition into safe, decent, and sustainable work.
Our mission has been to educate and empower vulnerable and marginalized youth to improve their quality of life and make their livelihood something they can be proud of. We achieve this through innovative and industry-recognized entrepreneurship and employment programs. Our programs help youth build small businesses or enter into the workforce, and learn key business concepts, networking and partnership techniques, personal and business budgeting and saving strategies, and how to overcome financial challenges and plan for the future.
What we have found is that many youth in our programs have little to no literacy skills and schooling. Therefore, we use low-literacy and youth-centred approaches such as storytelling, games, discussions, and visual aids to help make every single aspect of our programs meaningful and relevant to youth. Most importantly, we build on their own experiences and their own knowledge to strengthen their abilities to earn money and earn it in safe and decent ways.
At the beginning of this year, Street Kids International and Save the Children Canada joined together to develop a holistic youth livelihood platform, which integrates a systems approach to child protection and gender equality. Save the Children has always been a leader in child and youth protection under four key pillars: legislation and policy mechanisms of national governance; services and social welfare systems at both the national and local levels; social change to address behaviour and attitudes from individual, family, community, education, health, and law enforcement; and child and youth participation to build social dialogue and engage in meaningful participation with children and youth.
Integrated within all of those pillars is a clear and concrete understanding of gender equality. Girls and boys, young women and men face different child protection risks and challenges and different economic opportunities and barriers, as Dianne mentioned earlier. Both organizations, Street Kids International and Save the Children, share similar visions and approaches by partnering with local organizations and government. Through this merger we will expand the scope and skill of Street Kids' entrepreneurship and employment programs with Save the Children's global presence and a child protection and gender lens to ensure that youth livelihood development both protects and enables our future generations.
Save the Children Canada led the formation of the International Child Protection Network of Canada, a coalition of Canadian NGOs formed in 2013. Street Kids International, now a part of Save the Children Canada, is a core member of this group. Drawing on the ICPNC, Street Kids International and Save the Children expertise for child and youth poverty, we would like to offer the following four recommendations to the Canadian government:
First, we need a holistic approach to youth livelihood programming, which integrates key aspects of child protection and gender equality across the life stages of a child. It is critical so they can respond to diverse vulnerabilities and inequalities as well as to act on the potential that exists as they grow, learn, and mature, and determine their place in society.
Second, we need to see increased investment in our youth. This involves investment in formal and alternative education and training with specific programs for youth entrepreneurship, apprenticeship and vocational training, life skills, financial management, and literacy training, job search counselling, and job matching. We call on this government to help support and form employment creation and livelihood diversification and make investments for youth to access safe credit, insurance, and savings programs to reduce the economic drivers of child and youth poverty.
Third, we need adequate funding for youth livelihood and child protection in emergencies. Tens of millions of children and youth are affected by conflict and disaster each year, experiencing devastating impacts on their social, emotional, and economic well-being. However, child protection and youth livelihood is among the lowest funded sectors in humanitarian aid.
Fourth, we recommend that private sector partners be accountable to children's rights and business principles. Launched in 2012 by Save the Children, UNICEF, and UN Global Compacts, these 10 principles guide and encourage businesses to respect and support children's rights and assess their impacts in the workplace, marketplace, and community.
Economic development has the potential to provide long-term benefits and improve the standard of living in impoverished communities; yet without attention to children's rights and protection, business operations can also have unintended negative consequences, including an increase in the worst forms of harmful child labour, unsafe working conditions, violence, and sexual exploitation of children and youth.
To conclude, girls and boys, young women and men, are our present and future power and the key to bringing peace, sustainability, and healthy societies worldwide. We believe in them, but they need our support and our provision of opportunity to positively engage in their own lives and their own futures.
Thank you for your attention.