Why youths should put skills over jobs

As it’s seen in the world today, youths are one of the most underrepresented subsets of the global population when it comes to decision making. Th is is not due to under-population of youths but a jaundiced, stigmatized perception of youths by the ruling class all around the world. Although the terms “youth” and “young people” are conceived diff erently by people in diff erent 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 period (transition stage) between childhood and adulthood. Demographically, youths have a global population of 1.1 billion claims a whopping 18 percent of the entire world’s population; 60 percent of which live in Asia; 15 percent, in Africa; 10 percent, in Latin America and the Caribbean; and the remaining 15 percent, in developed countries and regions. Th ese facts echo the unparalleled signifi cance of youth in our world today and reiterate their importance in planning for future generation. 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. What can be done to address this? Poverty is a state of penury and lack. Th e only antidote to it is earning through just means. Th e perception of “goto-school, get-a-job-after” has led many youths to believe skill acquisition is not for them which leaves the world with a teeming population of “clueless youths”. It is high time youths acquired skills and take up vocations they are passionate about and lifts them well beyond the poverty and marginalization indices. Alli Sheriff deen Abiola, Ibadan

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