YES Center Hanoi – Youth Empowerment through Skills Training

Young people, and especially young women, are more likely to be unemployed and among the working poor than adults as they are more vulnerable to economic shocks. The government launched different policies to address youth issues in the labour market, such as programmes to support young people in vocational training and to promote youth entrepreneurship. It is in this context that HOPE’87 has made it its mission to contribute to the empowerment of the youth in Vietnam, especially of girls and young women. The establishment of the YES Centre in Hanoi made it possible to strengthen the skills and voices of the young people, to help them become economically more self-reliant and to enable them to take a leading role in poverty alleviation initiatives in their own country.

Young people who graduate from existing vocational schools have limited or no practical experience relating to their vocation and furthermore have no exposure to disaster reduction measures (DRM), practices and procedures, which makes them vulnerable. Among local companies, there seems to be limited understanding about having human resources to build in-house DRM capacity. Instead, they hope the State will take care of the aftermath of disasters. This point of view is mainly driven by lack of vision and limited financial means. There is a critical need to build capacity for enterprises regarding DRM.

Taking all this in consideration, the new YES Centre in Hanoi was based on vocational training, creating job opportunities and start-ups for young people. Besides, the project aimed to empower corporations and factories work and help them build and implement their security plans. The direct target group of this project were 500 young people, of which 60% were young women. The age range of the target groups was 15 to 22 years, having accomplished at least class nine or more. The indirect target beneficiaries of this project were 2,430 family members. The YES Centre provided a vocational training programme including ICT, English language, business accounting, fashion design and textile production, hospitality management, tourist guide as well as a disaster risk reduction (DRR) training. Among the target group, life skills development was another major component of the project. Life skills training helped participants to enhance their self-confidence, knowledge on life- related issues, skills on interpersonal relationships, leadership development and problem-solving capacity.