ncdc

Community Services

Youth Empowerment

Youth Empowerment in Papua New Guinea’s urban centres is quite probably every city council’s most challenging task because of the issues every young Papua New Guinean faces. In Port Moresby, these issues are almost common across the broad spectrum of the city’s unemployed youth demographic – incomplete formal education, rural-urban drift frequency, lack of skills, unemployment, lack of financial capacity, and the list may continue.

Although challenging because of the fluidity in youth movement from area-to-area within the city or city-to-village-to-city, the National Capital District Commission, through its Youth Desk, has been trying to coordinate, register, analyse and find solutions to help the youth of Port Moresby.

Youth Up-skilling Program: Working in partnership with registered skills trainer, Ginigoada Business Development Company, the National Capital District Commission identifies young men and women for skills training and facilitates for this through Ginigoada, which works at finding placement with the Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry membership. To date, thousands of young people between the ages of 12-25 have undergone training in carpentry, plumbing, bricklaying, mechanics and ‘Starting Your Business’. Annually, there is a turnover of up to 100 youths who find a footing in the Formal and Informal sectors because of the work that the localhost/NCDC, through its Youth Desk, is doing in partnership with Ginigoada and the business houses of Port Moresby.

Economic Empowerment: To equip the youth better and set them on a pathway to financial empowerment, localhost/NCDC started a program in 2016/2017 with the National Development Bank through a pilot project. Called the ‘Business Incubation Centre’, the project entails the construction of a facility and the leasing of this facility to young entrepreneurs in business start-ups who, while running their respective businesses, receive ‘on-the-job’ training in business management. The project is nearing the completion of groundwork and is expected to open mid-2017.

Life-skills Training: The National Capital District Commission also avails itself to city youth who fall within the age group 12-25 in a program called ‘Boys2Men/Girls2Women’. This is in conjunction with the Up-Skills Program and is aimed at mentally and emotionally preparing the young people to bridge the gap between adolescence and adulthood as many of these young people have not had the benefit of completing formal education and may have missed out on valuable lessons taught in classrooms.

Community Development Officer, Rex Buka, who is directly in charge of the Youth Desk said in a recent interview that the biggest challenge being faced was that young people are never stationary in one place to enable easier coordination and continuity. The fluidity in movement poses a certain challenge to programs that Mr Buka hopes would change soon so the Desk can continue better with its programs.

Registered so far are eight youth groups with 50 members to a group, giving a total of 400 that the Desk works with on a regular basis.


Projects