Indonesia has been considered as one of the key countries that will shape the future of the global economy by 2030. However, the huge population of 261.1 million people in Indonesia can be an asset or a liability for the nation, depending on the way the people are developed. More than 28 million Indonesians still live below the poverty line, while 40% of the population remain vulnerable of falling into poverty. One of the challenges that causes poverty is the employment growth, which is now slower than the population growth, while 62% of the total unemployment in Indonesia are youth, aged 15 to 24-year-old.
There are various causes that lead towards youth unemployment, especially from the ‘supply’ side, as youth problems are quite complex. In order to break the cycle of poverty and change the future of Indonesia, developing Indonesian youth becomes crucial, as they should reach their peak productive years by 2030.
Continuously innovating, YCAB is now developing Centers of Change (CoC), a breakthrough intervention model that aims to touch not only the lives of the youth but also the microsystems around them. Through this, we hope to impact more people and accomplish our end goal which is to help youth to be self-reliant or in Bahasa, we call it, ‘mandiri’.
There will be four main activities in the Center of Change:
- Providing hard skills and life skills education for the out-of-school youths and parenting skills for the parents that live near the center or the surrounding communities using ‘Pack & Go’ vehicles;
- Providing life skills education to the youths, based in low grade secondary schools, while training the teachers on fun learning, and the parents on effective parenting skills;
- Creating and managing ecosystem platforms to provide continuous support to the beneficiaries;
- Business or investments and tri-sector partnership activities to sustain the Center of Change program.