Paruata Gurdayal in Suva
The Pacific needs a regional youth fund to provide young people with the needed resources to address their issues.
This was one of the recommendations in the State of Pacific Youth 2011: Opportunities and Obstacles report that has been released by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The report calls for specific attention to providing youths with the opportunities to propose projects that have a strong community focus. “The absence of available resources is a major reason for the lack of progress at the regional country level in addressing youth issues,” it said.
The report proposes a system for addressing this gap through a regional agency such as the SPC to set up a regional youth challenge fund.
The fund could call for proposals from governments, non-governmental organisations, churches and youth associations to address the various youth issues.
“Specific projects could be funded to improve female and male access to higher levels of education or basic literacy, or providing more educational or livelihood opportunities for young people with HIV/AIDS, or physical or mental disabilities,” it said.
Community focus
To attain a stronger community focus, the report recommended the use of schools as community service learning projects. This would be closely tied to the formal curriculum and involve working closely with partners in the community, such as local government and church groups, it noted.
An alternative was for the projects to be proposed and run by youth-led associations that involve school leavers.
“The creation of links between communities should be an important focus to lift the level of social trust with and between communities rather than fund activities that are limited to one community,” the report said.
Paruata Gurdayal is a reporter on Wansolwara, the student journalism newspaper published by the University of the South Pacific.
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