Showing posts with label youth. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

AGRICULTURE AS INCOME SOURCE FOR YOUTH: SHOWCASING JAMAICA

AGRICULTURE AS INCOME SOURCE FOR YOUTH: SHOWCASING JAMAICA

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Does agriculture still promise Glad Tidings for the youth of today in developing countries more so the poor ones?

Urbanization has been rapidly spreading across the developing world. The rising cities present themselves as lands of vast opportunities for the youth, an enchanting experience that has lured even the sons and daughters of small planters to seek jobs in the cities right after high school. Those who take up college degrees never return to their rural communities.

With new opportunities for agriculture setting in today, created by global markets, does agriculture promise a career to the youth in parallel manner as industries and services offer to them? Jamaica seems to show the way to such a positive track in farming for the youth as shown in the report below.

[Philippines, 08 November 2011]

Source: http://www.beta.undp.org/undp/en/home/ourwork/povertyreduction/successstories/agriculture_opens_new_doors_for_young_jamaicans.html

Agriculture opens new doors for young Jamaicans

Kingston – Some 650 young and jobless women and men in four impoverished areas of Jamaica have received training in cultivation and food production skills to boost their job opportunities in local farming and agro-industries.

Through a three-year programme started in January 2010 by the Government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the young people have learned how to process fruit and vegetable juice, herbs and ginger powder to produce dried fruit, jams, sorrel, meat and honey.

“This project provides not only technical knowledge and training, but facilities and equipment that would have been difficult or impossible for them to do otherwise,” said Machel Stewart, UNDP Poverty Programme Advisor.

The Rural Youth Employment Project also involves workshops and career days with presentations by farmers and agribusiness professionals from around the country where nearly one third of Jamaicans aged 15-29 are unemployed.

“Agriculture is beneficial to my family and to the whole world,” said a 15 year-old high school student who dreams to own a farm in Saint Thomas, one of the most underdeveloped parishes in the island, with high levels of unemployment, poverty and early pregnancy cases.

“It helps us spend less money because we grow what we eat,” she added.

More than 360 high-school students – 60 percent of them women – have been involved in agriculture career days. In addition, 114 young community leaders attended workshops on leadership, team building and management, fund-raising and event planning, community safety and security.

The project - a US$1,000,000 partnership with the National Centre for Youth Development, the Rural Agricultural Development Authority and national youth organizations - is implemented by Jamaica’s Scientific Research Council and funded by UNDP and the United States Agency for International Development.

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Thursday, November 03, 2011

YOUTH AS CHANGE DRIVERS

YOUTH AS CHANGE DRIVERS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Youth as change drivers is hardly a new phenomenon. The advent of modernity has seen the youth (ages 18 through 30 roughly) began searing critiques of status quo, critiques that later evolved to large-scale mass movements aiming to overthrow establish authority. The Philippines is a concrete case in point where the youth of the late 19^th century led the nationalist independent movement that created the new nation.

What makes a youth-led change program unique is that it is an alternative to the old notions of a working class-led movement for change. The ideologies of the 19^th century, same ideologies that have stubbornly stayed and solidified till the 20^th century, were very strongly class-based cognitive forms, which excluded the possibility of youth-led or gender-led change programs.

Old ideologies are finally cracking, thus paving the way for alternative tracks to social sector-driven change. The Arab Spring for instance highlighted the stinking Jurassic state of the old options and the decisive import of a youth-led change.

Below is a briefer from the UNESCO about writings from the youth concerning their sector as drivers of change.

[Philippines, 04 November 2011]

Source: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco-courier/

How youth drive change

The International Year of Youth (August 2010 – August 2011) turned out to be more revolutionary than expected. At the beginning of 2011, young people rose up in Tunisia and then in Egypt, and the movement spread to other countries in the region, also rousing countries in Europe such as Spain. Elsewhere in the world, youth are mobilizing for a range of causes, as varied as the means they use. Much more involved than we tend to think, young people have decided to take things in hand. And in this issue of the Courier, it is they who are speaking out, expressing their concerns and explaining their actions.

To read this issue please click here (PDF-56 pages)

Cover "How youth drive change" of the UNESCO Courier (July - September, 2011) - © UNESCO

Young people in the world: So different and so alike, Monique Coleman
Mobile revolution, Gigi Ibrahim
Spring of outrage, Alfredo Trujillo Fernandez
Miracle Weapons, Serge Amisi
When poetry is louder than a bomb, Nate Marshall
Moonlight stars, Carol Natukunda
A young sughar, Nosheen Abbas
Rebels with a cause, Jens Lubbadeh
Prescriptions for a sick planet, Zhao Ying
Green architecture, Carlos Bartesaghi Koc

OUR GUEST

Revolution: one of the great feats of civilization, Khaled Youssef

*To display PDF documents, Acrobat reader is needed: download the latest version

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Wednesday, July 06, 2011

CHINA’S YOUTH CAN CAUSE ULTRANATIONALIST MELTDOWN

CHINA’S YOUTH CAN CAUSE ULTRANATIONALIST MELTDOWN

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Magandang araw! Good day!

I have just discoursed on ultranationalist hegemony in domestic China and the repercussions of this extremism on foreign policy. China’s neighbors are now ‘crying wolf’ over Chinese military intrusions into their claimed island territories, which could be just but test-casing the extent and limits of the military option in China’s counter-claims over those islets.

China doesn’t possess the necessary ‘blue water’ navy yet that can aid in sustaining its military campaigns in case of long-drawn conflicts with potential adversaries. So its neighboring countries are unduly rendering China into a global threat of sorts, by over-estimating its strengths and by ‘cry wolf’ agitations.

Ultranationalism, an extremist form of nationalism that is in kinship with Japanese militarism, nazism, and fascism, is an anachronism in the emerging global context of increasing synergy among economies, cultures, and peoples. It is a scourge of any nation and isn’t easy to take down or diminish unless that other internal political developments will make them obsolete and powerless.

If there is any political force today that can effectively diminish ultranationalism in China, it is the youth of the Chinese nation itself. The globe is experiencing today a clash of generations, as the young generation just couldn’t resonate with the antiquated world views and ideologies of their elder generations.

The youth of China are very well in touch with the peoples of the outside world, and do not in any way share the fervor and enthusiasm for hegemonism by their ultranationalist elders. It will just take one cataclysmic event to rouse the youth, and before long the young ones will be shaking down the foundations of old ideologies and powers.

The same phenomenon is responsible today for the overthrow of old nationalists in Eqypt and Tunisia. It is also shaking down many other Arab states towards an overthrow of established order and replacement by a more pluralist, democratic governance and cultural ferment.

The same youth force strives to reach out in friendship, cooperation, and mutual respect with other youths and peoples of the world, contrasted to the ultranationalists who are intoxicated with dreams of expanding territories beyond established orders through military might and destruction.

I am very positive that the youth can be relied upon to further avert a breakdown of Chinese society into a new totalitarianism of ultranationalist mold. Fact is, if the Chinese youth will just speak out more strongly today about foreign policy, I guess the more moderate leaders of China may listen.

[Philippines, 17 June 2011]

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