{"id":119781,"date":"2021-10-30T16:35:29","date_gmt":"2021-10-30T23:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=119781"},"modified":"2021-10-30T16:35:29","modified_gmt":"2021-10-30T23:35:29","slug":"to-remind-our-leaders-what-we-need-today-youth-employment-follow-the-youth-self-employment-program-of-bangladesh-1982-till-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/10\/30\/to-remind-our-leaders-what-we-need-today-youth-employment-follow-the-youth-self-employment-program-of-bangladesh-1982-till-today\/","title":{"rendered":"To Remind our leaders what we need today: Youth Employment -Follow The Youth Self Employment Program of Bangladesh.(1982 till today)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Garvin Karunaratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The Ministry of Youth\nDevelopment where I was working as the Commonwealth Fund Advisor in Youth\nDevelopment was attending to traditional youth work and providing skills\ntraining to 40,000 youths annually. The Military Government that took over in\n1982 expressed dissatisfaction with the programmes and at an evaluation,\npresided over by Air Vice Marshall Aminul Islam, the Minister for Labour and\nManpower,  I was questioned as to what\ncontribution I could make for Bangladesh. It was delivered in the form of a\nmilitary command<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I replied that it would be\nideal to have a Self Employment Program which will guide and train the annual\nintake of 40,000 youths  undertaking\nskills programs to become self employed. \nBereft of any such programme to guide them to venture into employment\nmost of the trained youths remained unemployed. I was told blankly that this\nwas something that can never be achieved because The ILO had miserably failed\nto establish a self employment program in Tangail in the earlier three years.\nThe Secretaries of the Finance and other Ministries strongly objected, stating\nthat it would end up in a waste of funds and also that the Youth Ministry\nshould not be entrusted with the task of creating employment opportunities. I\nargued that though the ILO failed, I had the ability to  succeed because I had established many\nemployment projects in my work in Sri Lanka. I also argued that youth work\nshould concentrate on skills training and guiding the trained to establish\nenterprises. The Hon Minister listened carefully to an easy two hours\u2019\narguments between me and the Secretaries of some Line Ministries. Finally he\nordered all of us to shut up and asked the Secretaries for the number of drop outs\nof the education system in any one year, those who would be searching for\nemployment without any qualification. The answer was in the millions. Then he\nasked for the number of youths who would be guided to become self-employed\nthrough Government Programs. The answer was none. He immediately ruled that I\nshould be allowed to establish a youth self employment program. The Secretary\nto the Treasury immediately vetoed it by stating that there were no funds. I\nimmediately said that I needed no funds, but authority should be granted for\nthe Ministry to re deploy officers, redraft their work remits and to find\nsavings within the skills training budgets for expenses on holding workshops to\ntrain and guide youths to become self employed. The Hon Minister granted that\nrequest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Youth Development\nDepartment under my direction  got\ncracking the very next day, identifying key areas where the work will commence,\ndrafting training schedules to train the staff who attended to skills training on\nhow to guide the youths to make their own assessment of how they can be self\nemployed in their habitat. The Ministry took over elements of national\nplanning, in identifying areas where there was a potential for youths to become\nself employed. I with a core of officials addressed the 40,000 youths in\ntraining on identifying areas where they could generate incomes,  and how they should draft plans to be self\nemployed. It was to be a family basis where the parents and elders of the\nyouths were also consulted. All skills training institutes were activated till\nlate at night to enable youths to utilize the machinery to make something\nthat  could be sold. What they made was\nevaluated at the next days training and this took on a process of training to\nmake marketable products. The three Livestock and Poultry Training Institutes\nof the Ministry established  an extension\nservice to help youths who commence farms in their homes. The Deputy Directors\nof Youth Development in charge of Districts took on the mantle of guiding the\nyouths to establish income generation activities and guiding them on a day to\nday basis. In short the Ministry of Youth Development  became in facto a Ministry creating\nemployment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1982 I commenced training\nthe staff in economics and techniques of community development and non formal\neducation where the thrust was to enable youths to make their own\ndecisions  and develop their abilities to\nmake them become successful entrepreneurs. I was training 2000 youths and also\ntraining the staff to continue the program when I leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The design of the program and what was achieved in eighteen months\nis recorded by the two Secretaries with whom I worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Ayubur Rahaman, The Secretary to the Ministry wrote on\n5\/10\/1983:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His contribution\ntowards successful launching of a number of skills  development training programs to promote\nemployment of youths deserves special appreciation. His role as formulator of\nthe self employment project has been particularly commendable. Dr Karunaratne  applied his initiative, skills, expertise and\nenergy on training of youth officers, preparation of business profiles for\nencouraging self employment and guding youths to formulate small projects. It\nwas mainly through his dedication and hard work \nthat the pilot program  for self\nemployment  has now been formally\naccepted as one of the most important development projects to be\nimplemented  by the Youth Development\nDepartment.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Md. Asafuddowlah, Joint Secretary on 28\/8\/1983:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Karunaratne\u2019s significant\ncontribution has been in the field of self employment to the drop out youths.\nThis Programme was not only designed by him but also guided by him. This\nactivity which was initially launched  as\na pilot experimental project has been a great success and has now been  adopted as a full fledged programme of the\nYouth Development Department. This is a non subsidy programme  in which the youths are subjected to non\nformal education inputs while they are engaged in viable bur small scale\ncommercial ventures. The Government  has\nbeen successful in providing  meaningful\nemployment  to a large number of youths\non this programme<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Md Asafuddowlah, \nSecretary to the Ministry, on 20\/2005, again wrote to me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You will be happy to learn that the Self Employment Program of\nthe Youth Development Department  has\nexpanded across the country and attained great success. I have not forgotten\nyour valuable contribution to the success of this programme<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Programme has been\nexpanded apace, run by the administrators trained by me. . On 19\/2\/2011, the\nGovernment of Bangladesh,  in its Report\nto the 34 th Session of the IFAD(FAO) stated that two million youths have found\nself employment on this Programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today this is the largest\nemployment creation program the world has known. The Programme currently\nguides  160,000 youths to become self\nemployed. The Ministry has taken over the task of national planning to create employment.\nNinety five percent of the work of the Youth Development   is to create employment for the youth. In\nthe first four years this Programme was not provided any funds. It was entirely\nworked on savings found in other approved training budgets. Later it was \nprovided ample funds. The Fifth Five Year Plan of the Planning Commission of\nBangladesh details an  eight page assessment of this great\nprogramme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Youth Self Employment Programme of Bangladesh, now in its\nthird decade, having guided as much as three million youths to become viably\nself employed stands out as a success that can be repeated in many a Third\nWorld country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garvin Karunaratne,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 October 30, 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Garvin Karunaratne The Ministry of Youth Development where I was working as the Commonwealth Fund Advisor in Youth Development was attending to traditional youth work and providing skills training to 40,000 youths annually. The Military Government that took over in 1982 expressed dissatisfaction with the programmes and at an evaluation, presided over by Air Vice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}