Why youths should rate skills over jobs

THE World Youth Skills Day gives youths an opportunity to assess the efforts they have made towards personal capacity development.
Youths are one of the most under-represented subsets of the global population when it comes to decision making. This is not due to the under-population of youths but the jaundiced, stigmatised perception of youths by the ruling class all over the world.
Although the terms “youth” and “young people” are conceived differently by people in different parts of the world, they most commonly refer to adolescents and young adults between the ages of 10 and 24.
Other sources extend this age bracket to include people of ages 29 or 35. But one factor is common to all: youth is the transition stage between childhood and adulthood. Demographically, youths have a global population of 1.1 billion, 18 per cent of the entire world’s population.
Sixty per cent of youths live in Asia; 15 per cent in Africa; 10 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean; and the remaining 15 percent in developed countries.
These facts echo the unparalleled significance of youths in our world today and their importance in planning for future generations.
Unfortunately, rather than being major stakeholders in devising global developmental programmes, youths themselves are the subject of global challenges, with many facing possibilities of early marriage, early childbearing, incomplete education and the threat of HIV and AIDS.
Statistics from United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs would paint a gloomy picture. Approximately 238 million youths live in extreme poverty, that is, they live on less than $1 a day; 462 million youths survive on less than $2 a day.
About 255 million young people live in the 19 countries with the largest poverty gaps; 15 of these 19 countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Experts estimate that in the 49 countries classified as having a high proportion of undernourished people, 110 million youths live in hunger.
•Muyiwa Ogunjobi
Port Harcourt, Rivers State.