1. Project status: Call for action
Name of project: Arm the Young Hands
Team leader: Farkhunda Jabeen
Country: Pakistan
Impacted underprivileged group: Unemployed youth in Karachi searching for job
Number of youth impacted: Around 300-500 youth (depend on our reach)
Number of people in the team: 10 (initially)
Period of project: 5 months: 150 days
Volunteering hours spent: 3 hr per day per member ; 4500 hours total
“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.”
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.
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, event organizers, and call centers (which need
workforce in bulk). 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, or, through chain mails or text messaging. 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 Sector)
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.
Many times, we find a lot of vacancies (in newspapers or through friends or chain
mails etc.) but they are not so suitable for us. Still, we should know that they may be
suitable to others. That’s where we will find our edge. We and people in our contacts will
consider those jobs too which do not ‘fit’ them yet they may ‘fit’ others. And thus they
will inform us about these jobs. We will then direct the youth for these jobs accordingly.
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 initiative by youth, for youth?
So come on youth, join the team.
We are a team!
Team of Youth!
