Interview by Maria Brindlmayer, Senior KM Specialist, YouthPower Learning, with Dr. Rose Mary Garcia, Director, Nicaragua Technical Vocational Education and Training Strengthening for At-Risk Youth Project (TVET-SAY).

MB: Thank you for talking with us about the Technical Vocational Education and Training Strengthening for At-Risk Youth (TVET-SAY) project. You are working in a challenging environment. We would like you to share some of the challenges that you have encountered and your initial successes so that other projects can learn from your experiences. Can you start by giving us a brief project background?

RG: TVET-SAY is basically concerned with expanding technical, vocational education and employment and entrepreneurship opportunities to youth at risk. The youth that we work with are located mostly in the Caribbean and coast of Nicaragua. Our target population is youth from 14 to 29 and in order to ensure that we’re working with youth at risk – i.e., the risk levels that are characteristically here in Nicaragua – we’ve been able to measure the vulnerability which youth find themselves in. That is how we target the youth that we work with.

MB: How large is your team now?

RG: We have fifteen people, of whom five are in Bluefields on the Caribbean coast.

MB: What are the project goals – what does your program aim to achieve?

RG: We give opportunities, scholarships and strengthen institutions that support youth at risk by improving technical vocational education institutions. We have built alliances with eight different TVET centers that will be providing, and are providing, capacity-training to youth. We’re incorporating entrepreneurship into the programs that didn’t have it, and we’re also looking at the strength of the soft skills that are being provided by those centers, and strengthening those institutions so that they better serve youth at risk from the Caribbean coast. The project has four components: The first component is to develop networks of TVET institutions that can dialogue with the private sector. It’s basically a network so that the institutions can learn what the labor demand is, including an optional dialogue between the private sector and those educational institutions that are preparing the youth for work. The second component is the institutional strengthening of the eight selected TVET centers. The third component is changing the public perception (including parents) in the Caribbean youth of technical education. . And the fourth component is the scholarship component. So that’s kind of the program components.

MB: Are you working directly with youth?
We are working directly with youth in the Caribbean. There’s a great deal of difference culturally between the Pacific and the Caribbean. On the Pacific coast the population is mostly Spanish-speaking, what we call mestizo. The Caribbean coast used to be an English colony, so from a cultural perspective, the Caribbean coast is very, very different. There are six different minority ethnic groups, and there’s a very strong presence of afro-descendents who kind of identify more with the Caribbean than they do with Central America.

MB:  How do these differences impact the perception of youth, of themselves or how they act?

RG: Oh, it’s incredible how different it is from one culture to another. In the past, the country has not been paying much attention to the Caribbean coast. Thus, it has lower levels of educational attainment, higher levels of crime, low density of public services. Institutions are not served as well and don’t receive resources from a central government in the way the Pacific does. And because there are very few highways and means of transportation from one coast to the other, there’s been a divide between the Pacific and the Caribbean. Geographically, there’s a jungle between the two coasts, and to this date, there is no highway that goes from the Pacific to the Caribbean. Transportation has to be either by air in very small Cessna planes, or you go on the highway through half of the country and then you have to go by boat, very small boats, called pangas, on the river.

MB: Does the transportation situation also impact the economic development in the area?

RG: Absolutely. The greatest challenge with regard to employers is that there’s not a great deal of economic activity in the Caribbean coast. There are estimates that show that in some areas, 50% of the youth are idle. They do not work, and they don’t go to school, they are referred to as NINI. With that kind of vulnerability, with lack of economic opportunities in the region, we have to look for opportunities to connect youth to the value chains that currently exist, i.e., looking at a the economic activity that is planned in the region and investments that are currently beginning to take off, in order to be able to stimulate employment and entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the lack of institutional presence has also opened opportunities for drug traffickers creating roots to take drugs up north. That leaves the youth at an even greater level of vulnerability. So, our project works within the context of lack of economic opportunities, lack of educational opportunities, and the risks of drug trafficking and trafficking in persons too.

MB: Did you do specific analyses to assess the economic opportunities, like a labor market assessment or some other opportunity assessment?

RG: We carried out the first study on youth labor demand in the Caribbean coast. Through that study, we discovered the opportunities that exist and where there is demand. We’re also able to identify all the constraints that exist. Furthermore, we carried out a youth perceptions study, i.e., how do the youth perceive their own opportunities, how do they perceive technical education. We have discovered through those studies, especially the perceptions study, the lack of knowledge of technical opportunities and courses. And in the youth labor demand study we discovered that the private sector is actually importing labor from the Pacific because the local youth don’t have the capacity to provide these services. The skills are not there.

MB: Have you also encountered perception issues?

RG: There is definitely a lack of skills, but there is also resentment: cultural resentment, because suppose an investor goes to the Caribbean and they can’t easily find people that are qualified. Instead of training them, they import labor from the Pacific and they’re not employing the local people. As a result, the local people become resentful that these employers are coming and bringing in their own labor instead of hiring the local people.

MB: What kind of levers have you identified, or are you using to overcome some of these challenges? Obviously you’re working on the skills. Are there also special interventions that you have planned to reduce the resentment or increase the willingness of the employers to hire local youth?

RG: Yes. We brought the private sector on board for the project in order to gain understanding of what they’re demanding. We’re starting from the demand part, looking at where the gaps are in skills and we’re filling them through the local technical vocational institutions that already exist. For the courses that we have developed, the employers have been able to provide input on the characteristics, the content of the courses, and what kind of soft skills they needed from youth. We have agreements with the private sector, so that they provide internships to the youth that are being trained. It’s a really close dialogue with the private sector. We’re not developing just courses for the sake of developing courses – we’re actually seeing what the demand from the private sector is first, and then we design the courses based on the private sector’s demand. I think that has been really positive. It has improved the dialogue between the educational institutions that are providing the capacity training, and it has developed a dialogue back and forth with the private sector. This relationship can now be sustained post-project.

MB: At what state of the project cycle is your project at this stage?

RG: It’s a four-year project. We just completed our first year. In component number four, which is the scholarships component, we hope to give a thousand scholarships. Right now we’re in the process of awarding three hundred scholarships to what’s called the técnico superior, which are two-year courses in those areas of demand in the Caribbean. Based on the labor demand study; based on the dialogue with the private sector; based on what the educational institutions can offer; we have selected, eight different careers that we’re offering this year. We are identifying youth and screening them for whether they qualify for the program. We’re really trying to focus on gender parity, especially in non-traditional careers. For instance, right now we have a short course on repairs of outboard motors, i.e., the motors that are used here in the Caribbean. Currently, only two women are inscribed in the program out of twenty students. One of them is a single mom of three, and she sees this as a great opportunity. Our hope is that over time, 50% of the scholarship recipients will be females. We launched a public awareness campaign for the course on repairs of outboard motors and we’re trying to stimulate women into non-traditional roles.

MB: How do you select your youth?
What’s really interesting about our instrument that measures the vulnerabilities in which youth find themselves, is that within that instrument we also look at the positive assets of that youth. We look at their attitude. We look at their optimism. And we look at different aspects of what they think their abilities are. Thus, we’re looking at youth in an integrated way. We want to target the most vulnerable populations, and yet we also want to look at that individual for the potential that they have and for their fit for the two-year program or a shorter program.

MB: Do you also teach soft skills or is your project limited to the technical skills?

RG: Soft skills are a big, big part of this project. We actually think that soft skills are more important than technical skills because it gives them a kind of “North”, it gives them the direction. We are now offering the soft skills before the technical skills training, and then we continue to train soft skills along with the technical skills because we think that it’s really important to demonstrate to youth that they’re in a different place now than where they were before.
MB: That’s wonderful! What are your objectives for this year?

RG: We’re starting our second year and it’s going to be our hardest year because we’re awarding our most scholarships. We’re also doing most of the institutional strengthening to the TVET centers. We are creating an online platform for the courses to offer dual-learning.  Thus, trainers in the centers receive in-person training complemented by some online training to give the teachers the flexibility of being able to study when they can. Teachers will be able to have access to these courses anytime. We’re doing some exciting things that TVET centers have never been done before: the staff have never been provided online courses before. Many centers have been surviving day to day. This is helping the institutions to become more sustainable. We look at their financial sustainability and plan with them strategically how they will be able to improve their resources.

MB: Is the online platform that you are developing only available to the institutions and teachers, but not the students?

RG: We’re actually doing two things. We’re developing the platform for the institutions as part of the institutional strengthening based on their own assessment of weaknesses and the assistance that they need. But through a private partnership with Claro (the mobile phone company), we’re also developing and designing an online platforms for students.  The big picture of the project is that we are incorporating the private sector in technical vocational education. We are achieving this by developing alliances with the private sector. The private sector is giving courses to technical vocational education centers. Let me give you an example: there’s a company that makes furniture and exports it all over the world. It uses very sophisticated woodwork. They’re called Simplemente Madera, which means “only wood”. This company is now providing capacity training for the TVET centers that provide carpentry. They’re giving them machinery, they’re giving them modern techniques. Through this alliance between the private companies and the TVET centers, we’re improving their offerings and the trainings that they can offer the local youth. 

MB: And I assume that this is a long-term relationship that can be maintained even after the project is gone?

RG: Yes. We are already seeing the fruits of the dialogue. Employers have said: “Oh, I didn’t know that center existed. That’s really interesting. I want to go visit it.” They’re interested in improving their human capital. It helps them to be more profitable if they increase the capacity of the sector.

MB: Once the youth are trained locally, will it be also more cost-effective for employers to hire local youth rather than bringing them in from other parts of the Caribbean?

RG: Yes, totally, because then they won’t have to provide housing, and I think the relationship between the local community and the private companies would improve a lot.

MB: What are your biggest challenges with regard to the centers?

RG: The biggest challenge of this project is the lack of technical vocational education centers in the Caribbean. Besides two government technical vocational centers there are no private technical vocational centers in the entire Caribbean, even though geographically it’s approximately 50% of the country and approximately 15 % of the population. Thus, we’re working with two universities on the Caribbean coast. Out of our eight centers, six of our centers are in the Pacific coast. So our biggest challenge is the geography and the cultural difference between the Pacific and Caribbean. Although we strengthen TVET centers, they are not physically located where the youth are. To overcome this, we have asked centers to provide mobile courses. Even though we’re strengthening centers on the Pacific side, it would have been great to work with centers in the Caribbean, but they don’t exist.

MB: And is there an opportunity to actually build more centers on the Caribbean side?

RG: Yes. One of our TVET centers is Fe Alegría. They have educational schools, either technical vocational education or primary schools. They have 36 different places where they assist marginal populations. None of them are in the Caribbean, and because of our partnership with them, they are now planning a strategic expansion to the Caribbean in order to help the Caribbean youth. I am convinced that they saw the need because we took all the centers to the Caribbean so that they could see the reality of the Caribbean. It was a learning experience for all of them. And it moved Fe Alegría so much that they saw a responsibility to help the Caribbean youth now.  They will start with one hundred scholarships in their current locations, and they’re planning to provide services to the Caribbean youth in a permanent school on the Caribbean coast.

MB: That is impressive. I’m sure that taking the youth out of their environment for the two years during the scholarship is not easy. Thus, I assume providing courses locally will be better?

RG: We have 11 youth here in Managua under a scholarship for a two year program. They were our first pilot group to see how bringing youth to the Pacific would work. It’s very difficult. They’re homesick. There’s a lot of cultural differences.

MB: What are the cost implications of taking them to the Pacific rather than providing courses locally?

RG: It’s three times more expensive.

MB: Do you have any success stories so far?

RG: Yes, we have several success stories which we have gathered and can share.

MB: What are your next steps?

RG: Over approximately the next six to eight months, we’re focusing on the scholarships. We’re developing a new strategy for fundraising for scholarships because we want to make the scholarship effort sustainable. We want to engage the private the sector so that there are self-generating scholarships for youth. We want to complement USAID funds with private sector funds for the scholarships to continue. So those are the two big items for this year. It’s a big year. We’re really excited because we have a team of five people and an office in Bluefields on the Caribbean coast. Their focus is on component four, i.e., the thousand scholarships, which is run from there. They have to reach the entire Caribbean coast. The team itself is multi-ethnic and speaks four different ethnic languages in order to reflect our reach and our openness to the ethnic diversity that exists in the Caribbean. That way everybody will feel welcome. We were very careful with selecting the staff, so that it would be a welcoming place for youth.

MB: Thank you very much for sharing your experiences with the YouthPower Learning Community. We wish you success with your ambitious activities this year!
 

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