Publications

BULLETIN 139-140
Youth, training and employability

April-September 1997

(Full text available only in Spanish)

 

THIS ISSUE

The adaptive process in the area of development which Latin America is experiencing has been accompanied by an important turnaround in the models of social politics. The universal aspirations, the centralized nature in institutional management, sectorialization, and statism that predominated in the past are giving way to new strategies. This is what they're looking for: to focus actions on objective groups defined by their condition of vulnerability, to act under decentralized schemes, to pose integral  interventions and articulate public and private agents in the lending of services.

The programs of employment and vocational training account for one of the most important vertices of these new efforts in social politics. They possess a series of characteristics that become particularly apt for the new paradigm of social politics. In the first place, and in its most philosophical dimension, the politics of employment and training share the central idea of a new economic model, and its doctrinaire basis: they should prepare the population for its insertion in the market, more so than protect it from fluctuations. Secondly, due to its nature and design, these politics are focused. Finally, in its most novel versions, it seeks a  combination of public and private efforts that  allows it to act upon job demand as well as the job offer.

If on one hand there is a natural affinity between the employment  programs, the new economic  model and its paradigm in social politics, these programs are effectively crucial in attaining success in the development routes chosen. Among the lessons offered by countries of recent industrialization, one of the most important refers to the investment in human capital. It's an investment that should be orientated adequately to the productive needs of open countries, inserted in projects of high international competition. Added to that, is the promise of social integration that the new model entails with its expectations for economic growth to be achieved if these models count with the required human resources.

Perhaps politics on the subject of the generation of the most promising jobs, training, and qualification are oriented toward the juvenile sector. That is where investment in human capital possesses the greatest time and potential to shed important returns. It is also there where one can more effectively cut down on vicious circles of unemployment, exclusion and poverty.

The anterior items, among other aspects, were taken on by Víctor Tokman, General Sub director of the ILO and Director of the Regional Office for the Americas in the dissertation realized on the occasion when they celebrated the VIII Latin American Conference of Ministers of Youth. Its transcript opens this special delivery. In his intervention, Tokman focused on the situation of labor at the juvenile level considering the following: the condition of the sector most affected by unemployment of youth; the concentration of unemployed youth in the most socially vulnerable groups; and the search and answers for that sector in the new structural context.

The elevated juvenile unemployment rate and its possible explications in Chile are analyzed in a provocative article by Eduardo Martínez Espinoza, a consultant extensively related with Cinterfor/ILO. In it, he discusses the postures that are most frequently expressed on the subject, developing it based on rigorous statistical  considerations-a set of alternative explications.

Within the framework of politics guided by the combat of poverty, in the region a number of programs have been developed, which aim at benefiting the job insertion of youth that come from low-incomed homes. They are inspired by the new paradigm on the subject of  social politics we mentioned on the first few lines. Diverse experiences carried out with strong strategic and methodological coincidences are undertaken in the rest of the articles that make up this special issue.

The Youth Job Training Program of CHILE JOVEN, represents the first experience of its kind initiated in Latin America. Through official documents (SENCE, Ministry of Labor and Social Security) that make reference to the results achieved to the current date, and in addition, reference to the outlines planted in its second phase, where the state of the project is revised, with special meaning.

At the same time, Argentina's Project Youth allows us to observe a policy on the subject, with similar inspiration to that which was planted in Chile, put to practice in a context of employment and growth with different characteristics. Also, this project represents the experience of greatest importance in what refers to the volume of resources and number of foreseen beneficiaries, with the country's size taken into account. Three qualified analysts contribute different perspectives of their reality.

Cláudio de Moura Castro, expert in Vocational Training, who currently holds the position as Chief of the IDB's Social Program Division, reviews the Argentine experience from the perspective of his role in the Training System. With this view, there comes forth a series of revelations of special interest: according to Castro, the project would have finished becoming a substitute training system for the whole country. The implications of this, as well as its results, are evaluated with special sharpness incorporating comparative elements.

At the same time, Claudia Jacinto, investigator and responsible official of the work group on quality training for the youth of poor sectors, of the Latin American Education and Labor Network, centers her analysis on the new meaning that, concerning this project and in light of its relation strategies, involve the following principal agents: the training institutions, the enterprises and the beneficiaries themselves. In this way, the incidence can be envisioned that factors at the micro level have on the global performance of a policy.

Lastly, Félix Mitnik, assessor to the Minister of Labor and Social  Security of Argentina who participated in the designation within the Project Youth of the responsible figure of the technical-pedagogical area, goes over the diverse stages of the design and implementation of the project. With abundant information and detailed analysis, the author reviews the sequence followed in the project's outline: diagnostic, design, consistency test, pilot test, execution, control and measurement of impact.

The development and results of the Program of Labor Training (PROJOVEN) of  Peru are analyzed in the article produced by a work group of the above-mentioned  program. This analysis are outlined within a diagnostic of the educational/labor situation of that country's youth, in which the program sited makes up an important part of the politics that the Ministry of Labor and Social Security develops on the subject.

Closing the revision of this new generation of projects in the field of training and job insertion of youth, the case of the Program Projoven is presented, carried out jointly by the National Institute of Youth and the Ministry of Education and Culture, the National Employment Administration and the National Board of Employment (of tripartite integration) of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security of Uruguay. Javier Lasida and Javier Pereira, Director and responsible official of the Department of  Evaluation and Investigations of Projoven, respectively, describe and analyze the objectives and activities of the program, its results and its institutional evolution. In the section Documents, the complete text of the Regional Operative Plan of the Regional Program of Actions for the Development of Youth in Latin America (PRADJAL), is included, as it was approved of in the latest Latin American Conference of  Ministries of Youth (Buenos Aires, July 31st to the 3rd of August of 1996). This plan constitutes a regional agreement with regards to the work agenda of the Latin American Organization of Youth in the period 1996-1999.

 

 

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