1. Project status: Call for action
Name of project: Arm the Young Hands
Team leader: Farkhunda Jabeen
School: Institute of Business Administration Karachi
Country: Pakistan
Impacted underprivileged group: Unemployed youth searching for job
Number of people in the team: At least 10 (team members needed)
“We can’t create jobs but we can create employment.”
Because
“We can’t create opportunities but we can find the
ways to discover and exploit opportunities.”

2. Youth Employment Worries

3. Imperfect Job Market

4. Imperfect Job Market
• There is no any single source of job vacancies. Some employers post
their job ads in websites while some in newspaper, which further differ
in themselves such as it may be organization’s own website or third
party job sites, and English newspapers, Urdu newspapers, or other
diverse newspapers. Finding a ‘suitable’ job to which one is eligible too
becomes very unlikely and a exhausted process as a result.
• Since there is no any synchronized source to job openings throughout
the job market, it usually happens that people are searching for their
‘desired jobs’ through sources (e.g. newspapers) which are different
from the sources where openings for such ‘desired jobs’ can actually be
found (e.g. references); or vice versa.

5. Proposed
Plan

7. Consolidating and Refining Job Sources
I and my team will first approach young ‘candidates’ who are searching for a job as well as
the underprivileged youth through posters; and also find them individually. We will also invite
others (friends, family, colleagues, neighbors and the readers) to join us and look for the
‘targeted’ candidates around them and inform us. More effective media we are going to use to
approach youth and gathering info about their required jobs is the networking websites mainly
Facebook, Twitter, and others.
After connecting with youth, we will organize a data base containing different types of jobs
for different people in terms of area, type of work, and work environment along with candidates’
eligibility and qualification. We will then search, gather, and consolidate all job info from different
newspapers, websites, and other online & offline sources for the candidates.
We would also provide career counseling to the candidates free of cost; since my team
involves some educated and experienced students too, they can aid candidates a lot in terms of
their career guidance. We also have enough resources to approach youth and gather and
synchronize all the relevant info; and of course, what we plan to do is definitely a good utilization
of our resources.

8. Informal Sector Jobs
There are many jobs in informal sector of our economy which don’t focus much on
education and experience. These include jobs in entrepreneurial businesses like clinics and
small medical centers, hospitals, retail stores, saloons, tailors, boutiques, repair shops, and
event organizers etc. These employers prefer to find employees through low cost sources
such as the ‘classified’ column of newspapers which contains a bulk of want ads and make job
search process extremely exhaustive, or, they may hire through referencing. We will collect
and organize all the job info from even such low popular sources too and thus direct the
candidates for the jobs matched with their interest and qualification.
In this way we will be serving as an informal Human Resource firm which will not only be
serving the educated youth but also focusing well on the low educated and underprivileged
youth not only in terms of finding the job but also easing their job search process.

9. Developing a Reference Base (Formal and Informal)
Since most of the formal and informal sector organizations rely on references to hire
employees for the vacancies, it would be effective if the youth have contacts with people who ‘know
about’ the vacancies and can refer them, as youth can’t even know about such vacancies as these are
not posted any where. Our team will develop job contacts and references by asking our fellow alumni
and other friends and familiars , as well as whoever willing to join us, to inform us about job
vacancies in organizations where they are working or where they know there are vacancies (through
their contacts). We will thus facilitate the youth to ‘know about’ the suitable jobs which even rely
on referencing.
Further, the candidates who will be able to get job through us can be further involved in our
reference base as they will have their own job contacts from where they would have just hired. In
this way, the reach of our reference base will be extended due to this ‘reverse referencing’ i.e. the
newly hired youth develop its new job contacts and thus facilitate to develop a network of job
contacts physically and online. More people we have, more info of vacancies we will have, and thus
more youth can be benefited.

10. Though informal, our network will really be worthwhile for youth, mainly
the underprivileged youth, for which no such platform is developed in our
country, which can not only synchronize the related job sources for them
but also can let youth in ‘being employed and get others employed’ through
an easy yet effective tool i.e. social and cyber Networking.
It will be the trust, hope, and the pleasure from fulfillment of employment
related needs which will make youth a connected reference base, or a team.
Apart of my hometown, Karachi, we can well extend the reach of this plan, the
search for jobs, candidate youth, and our reference base and the network
to many other cities of Pakistan and even throughout the globe if youth
from the other cities of Pakistan and outside also join the team.
Isn’ t this project a fantastic innovation by youth, for youth?
So come on youth, join the team . We are a team! Team of Youth!