YES Peru advocates for youth green jobs!

The RTW Peru team is working very hard to advance the green agenda for youth jobs. VIDA –the host agency for YES Peru- is coordinating a network to make this possible. The interest in the environment sector is getting to the employment agenda. Still, we find it is challenging to link “green jobs” with the workers rights and the decent work agenda.

We are using two radio programs to promote Rework The World, the 5th Global YES Summit in 2010. We are organizing planning meetings with the support of institutions and leaders like Congressman Falla Lamadrid, the GEA Group, JARC, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, CCSA, the Global Village Energy Partnership (GVEP International) and FREDEMAR. More than 100 people from diverse organizations have so far been involved in building towards Sweden 2010 and the Latin American regional meetings this and next year.

We have already identified some 40 green projects in 4 fields: renewable energy, forest, urban waste and Ecoturism. We see these are key areas where Peru can develop new opportunities for youth green jobs and we’ll seek to mobilize the government and investors to support these projects. Towards the end of November the top 5 initiatives in each area will be showcased in the Peruvian Parliament.
We will showcase these projects on this blog soon, but you can follow the Peruvian process at: http://greenjobsperu.wordpress.com/

Do you know?...

Some of the most critical Green Jobs are to be found in the energy, mining, agricultural, construction and transportation sectors. These sectors has made an important impact in helping to cut the consumption of energy, raw materials and water through high-efficiency strategies designed to ‘de-carbonize’ the economy, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to minimize waste, pollution, to protect and restore the ecosystems. The lessening of the impact of the human footprint on the environment arising out of Green Jobs which is generally thought to be gradual. Different jobs contribute to the process to different degrees.

Remember!

Green jobs are the forms of employment that are mindful of the importance of minimizing the impact of the particular activity on the environment... What Green Jobs seek to do, is to reduce environmental fallout to levels that are regarded as sustainable as far as possible, to repair environmental damage.

"Rework" The Practical Solution to Youth Unemployment and Poverty alleviation

The Rework Process is very critical in focusing the world to start tasking and stop talking. YES Kenya seeks to create over 2000 Solar Entrepreneurship Opportunities. The Problem of unemployment continues to bedevil our continent. If this project pulls through, it promises to be the next anchor for a revolution to create green jobs for many Youth in Africa. Created on the premise of extinguishing 1 million kerosene lamps in rural Africa, the project is ambitious and at the same time realistic to the challenges that Africa faces today.

The Rework process will be the benchmark to create the partnerships that will see different players to focus on how young people can engage constructively on creating opportunities at community level. We look forward to partnerships that will see and follow up to get involved in this project.

Renewable energy will be part of this process as well on how young people can create eco charcoal and save the nvironement.

Emmanuel Dennis

Rework & The Green Jobs Initiative

A key input to the Rework the World initiative is the international Green Jobs Initiative --a joint initiative by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Employers Organization (IOE) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which has been launched to assess, analyze and promote the creation of decent jobs as a consequence of the needed environmental policies.

It supports a concerted effort by governments, employers and trade unions to promote environmentally sustainable jobs and development in a climate-challenged world. Work under the Green Jobs Initiative so far has focused on collecting evidence and different examples of green jobs creation, resulting in a major comprehensive study on the impact of an emerging green economy on the world of work.

UNEP, ILO, IOE and ITUC are planning a second phase of the Green Jobs Initiative. The project will move from information gathering and analysis in the green jobs report to assistance in policy formulation and implementation through active macro-economic and sectoral assessment of potential green jobs creation.

TechnoServe joins Rework to advance youth 'green' entrepreneurship

TechnoServe--the leading organisation providing business solutions to poverty--has joined Rework to create synergies between the initiative and its work on the ground.

TechnoServe is a recognized leader and innovator of business solutions to poverty. Through 40 years of work it has empowered the success of entrepreneurial men and women who − with the right business model, skills, network, financial services and access to markets – can build sustainable businesses that generate income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries.

In 2008, TechnoServe assisted businesses generated $149 million in revenues, and bought $64 million from almost 200,000 low income suppliers. TechnoServe has been supporting entrepreneurship and enterprise development in Kenya and East Africa for decades. It has a successful business plan competition model for identifying and nurturing high potential entrepreneurs, provision of aftercare to launch their businesses and building local business service provider capacity to build the ecosystems required to support their scalability.

The skills and assets that TechnoServe brings to Rework the World include:

• Dedicated support infrastructure on the ground and a network of leading private and public sector partners dedicated to Kenyan enterprise development
• Proven results in design and implementation of East African youth entrepreneurship and enterprise programs, including young women-focused programs
• An integrated approach to small and medium enterprise development, built around a plan competitions, with a strong focus on follow practical entrepreneurship training
• Strengthening local Business Development Services (BDS) providers to sustain and scale small enterprise growth.

Granja Porcon in Peru: an agro - tourist experience

Rural cooperative offering an agro-tourism program in Cajamarca's northern highlands, including farming and animal husbandry. These activities include sowing and harvesting potatoes and other roots and garden vegetables, seed selection and soil preparation. It also features cow-milking by hand, selection of breeding stock, visit to a plant nursery and participation in the pine wood rehabilitation and management program, which carries out a very successful project. it is a mini-zoo with animals of regional fauna. It is also possible to go on country walks or simply relax and enjoy the peacefulness and tranquility of the beautiful scenery surrounding the community.

The inhabitants of the Granja Porcón farm offer an agro-tourist program where visitors can take part in a series of farming activities such as planting and milking cows by hand, live side-by-side with members of the community, giving them a window into their lifestyle, traditions and daily activities. The stay will also enable visitors to take part in festivals and rituals in addition to daily farm chores. It is a unique chance to swap living experiences in a balanced relationship with nature.

The most important part of this initiative is the 10,000 hectare forest area. The trees here are not indigenous but were planted for their value in the paper and furniture industries.Nonetheless, this is an effort in the direction of reforestation. Thanks to this, local farmers are getting new incomes improving their economies.

Watch the video in Spanish

The International Labour Organisation partners Rework

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has become a strategic partner of Rework the World.

In this capacity, the ILO will bring its experience and networks on employment policy in 183 countries, and specifically leverage its work on ILO's:

• The Youth Employment Programme and experience with the youth entrepreneurship agenda;
• The Green Jobs Initiative and networks focused on greening the economy;
• The Sustainable Enterprise Programme and technical cooperation resources with large scale outreach.

As a strategic partner, the ILO will also convene its constituents to the 5th YES Global Summit, including governments, employers’ and workers’ organisations in 183 member States who can take Rework's goals and agenda forward.

SEED initiative joins Rework to push for youth green jobs

The SEED initiative, an international sustainability prize hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) jointly with UNDP and the World Conservation Union (IUCN), has joined Rework the World to connect leading entrepreneurs in areas such as energy, agriculture and water to the youth green jobs agenda.

The main goals of the SEED Initiative are to build support for social and environmental entrepreneurs, to integrate them into the green economy, and to promote their role as contributors to the wider development process.

Through a competition, SEED every year selects the most promising start-up social and environmental entrepreneurs around the globe and provides them with tailored capacity building packages to meet their most urgent needs, to grow their networks, and to heighten their profiles, so helping them to consolidate and scale up.

Through this partnership, SEED will work with its entrepreneurs to explore how to accelerate the youth employment components as a driver of their scaling strategies. SEED's aim is to encourage the growth of micro and medium sized enterprises to contribute to shape a green economy.

Join REWORK THE WORLD -500 Million Young People Will Look For Work In The Next 10 Years

We all face the common challenge – to rework the world as we see it today.

The path to a global sustainable society must be built by creating sustainable business, jobs and living. The journey starts with what matters most to us as individuals - our jobs and every day security in our local community.

Our goal is to mobilize young people to demonstrate their green ideas and to involve existing business and capital to create new companies and new jobs.

Our challenge is put global and local issues in the same picture. Both the global and the local perspectives must be concrete and easy to understand.

We need practical and doable ways to deal with these issues.

This is why we need to Rework the World!

/Ulla-Britt Fräjdin-Hellqvist - Team Rework the world

African Demographics vs. Green Economy: What Future for Youth?

One African in two is a child. The Economist recently illustrated how Africa’s baby bonanza threatens the continent with meltdown. It reports, for example, that forests in Kenya have shrunk by at least 60% since 1990, mainly because more people are cutting down trees for fuel; doubting whether Kenya’s government will have the strength to save the forests on which Nairobi depends for water and hydroelectric power.

A country’s risk of conflict rises four percentage points for every one-point increase in the youth population, according to the Norwegian demographer, Henrik Urdal. If young people do not get jobs or find productive paths for their lives, they may turn to violence. So, argues The Economist, Africa’s population pyramids, which are wide at childhood and adolescence (see graph) may be more promising than Italy’s, but are also more ‘combustible’. In some African cities, where the rate of unemployment is 70%, people are recruited to militias for a day’s wage. Kenyan politicians and businessmen were accused in last year’s elections of paying young men to turn parts of the country into war zones.

The links between population, the way we produce and consume energy, and the fragility of the natural resource base is at the heart of the problem. But there are also solutions. Innovation can play a key role in cutting through this gordian knot, and is the main goal of the work that the Pathways to Scale Program is doing with the Tallberg Foundation. Just like mobile phone companies could leapfrog development from the crumbling state-owned telecoms, new business models emerging in renewable energies such as wind and solar power, biofuel cookers and rainwater tanks offer similar potential.

In Tanzania, 300 hectares of forests a day are lost to the production coal for cooking, which sustains rural livelihoods. Joint Environmental Techniques (JET), an organization associated to Rework, is promoting a way of producing charcoal briquettes with agricultural waste, which burn longer and are cheaper than coal in the market, providing sustainable livelihoods to poor rural families. Rework aims to convene the clusters of actors that can help JET, among other businesses, scale up the impact of its model on youth employment, faster. Their potential is to change the equation between the demand for energy and the depletion of natural resources, while generating the much needed ‘green’ youth employment.

The transition to a ‘green economy’ will remain a distant promise if young people, which are already the majority of the population in many developing countries, don’t find a way of getting involved. Our partners, such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and TechnoServe, are joining the initiative to push this agenda in their respective spaces, whether by creating enabling business environments for these initiatives and accelerating skills building on the ground or by advancing the necessary global public policies, investment opportunities and coordination. Much more remains to be done, not least by putting the challenge of creating youth green employment high on the development agenda.