Youth & Disability Inclusion

Youth & Disability Inclusion

Our Youth & Disability Inclusion Program

Overview

Innovative approaches to enhancing employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for young people are vital to youth development and economic empowerment that can contribute to sustained economic growth. Strongim Bisnis considers the involvement of young people in the design and roll out of our activities across the cocoa, coconut and tourism sectors. We are also working with businesses and government to design interventions to directly promote youth entrepreneurship and economic opportunities.

Strongim Bisnis is proactively ensuring that new economic opportunities stimulated by our program are available for young people, and that targeted opportunities are created for this important group.

Solomon Islands youth population is estimated at 180,000 people, or around 28% of the total population. The youth population is projected to increase to around 406,000 by 2050. Young people are defined as those from 15 years of age to 34 years of age.
A key barrier faced by young people in taking up new opportunities is often lack of work experience, low level of skills and low access to productive assets.
Young people in Solomon Islands face strong barriers to economic inclusion and the result is a very high rate of unemployment, with a marked gender gap. For example, around 64% of young men between the ages of 20-24 years have employment while around 34% of young women the same age do.
The root causes for the high unemployment rate for young people in Solomon Islands is reflected in the broader economy where there are limited economic opportunities available, especially in rural areas. Education presents challenges, with a high level of school drop-outs, especially when compulsory education finishes at age 12, and very limited availability of higher education opportunities. Amongst people aged 15-29 years, some 26% of males and 32% for females are either illiterate or can only read parts of sentences.
Various anecdotal estimates suggest that the annual increase in all jobs in the Solomon Islands labour market in the 2016/2017 period is no more than 4,000 annually, representing only about 20-22% of the total number of job seekers entering the labour market each year.
Mainstream youth inclusion across sectorial interventions and design specific interventions to target the barriers that the youth in Solomon Islands are facing.
Improve financial inclusion, especially for young women through saving groups, loans schemes and digital inclusion.
Provide training, internships, employment or entrepreneurship through value addition activities in the cocoa, coconut and tourism sectors.
Develop opportunities linked to digital and new technologies, for example, e-commerce.
Include young people as a key audience in exploring attitudes to gender norms and roles.
Strongim Bisnis is supporting the DreamCast Theatre, a promising social enterprise led by Solomon Island youth leaders and with strong potential to influence local culture and behaviours and to provide entrepreneurship opportunities for the youths.
Supporting the Bethlehem Youth Ministry to conduct a feasibility study for the commercialization of a portable biodigester for rural households, to be finalised in 2019. If feasible, commercializing the biodigester will generate income for the youth group, allow rural households to use biogas for cooking thus substituting firewood. This will have a positive impact on women’s health, on their unpaid care burden and also a positive impact on the environment as it will improve waste management and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions.
Supported disability organisation Bethesda at 2018 SolChoc festival. Bethesda students produce gifts that are sold as an income generating activity contributing to the Rural Training Centre’s fundraising strategy.