Sustainable Youth Empowerment.

Let’s define our key words so we can put our topic in the right perspective.

What does the term sustainable mean? According to Encarta Dictionary, sustainable simply means able to be maintained.

Who is a youth?  A youth is simply a young person. According to the National Youth Policy of Nigeria, a youth is recognized from the age bracket of 18-35 years.

What does the term empowerment mean? It is a process of making one more confident or assertive: to give somebody a greater sense of confidence or self-esteem (Encarta Dictionary)

Recently in the national dallies we read of politicians aspiring for political offices at different levels of government are “empowering” youths every other day. One may be misled to think these aspirants are really and truly empowering youths based on the conviction that empowered youths means empowered nation. It is interesting to know that all the noise being made on youth empowerment is as a result of the forthcoming 2015 election. Politicians offer tricycles, motorbikes, wheel barrows etc to youths sadly this type of empowerment is categorized under the backward empowerment style.

This type of empowerment is a backward empowerment style because it only seeks to provide the recipients material possession and that is supposed to be the late phase of any empowerment scheme if it is to be sustainable.

The first phase of any empowerment scheme should be aimed at capacity building. Capacity building which is the systematic expansion of an individual’s ability to comprehend, visualize and articulate. It is in this first phase that true empowerment takes place. Capacity building can be in form of Business seminars, entrepreneurial training on business development, seminar on finance and book keeping etc.

It is after a successful phase of capacity building that material empowerment should be employed; this is what is called Progressive Empowerment Scheme. We cannot claim to be empowering youths with Tricycles and motorbikes when they lack the intellectual content of managing the resources gotten from such enterprise and growing the business to an enviable height.

However, the reasons why politicians choose to use the backward empowerment style are solely because of their selfish motives. They desire to build a photo album that will chronicle all their “achievements”. They are also aware that capacity building is the intangible form of empowerment which cannot be captured with the lens of the camera; more so, will not visibly give them credit on the social media and their likes.

A sustainable Youth empowerment is such that would first empower the mind before the hands. When youths are empowered with tangible materials such as tricycles, the success of the empowerment lies solely on that material but when the mind is first empowered, the youth can turn the tangible into more tangibles hence creating jobs and empowering others.

Here is the cycle: Capacity building with material empowerment/empowers the beneficiary/creates more tangible materials/more tangible materials, creates more jobs/more Jobs, empowers more Youths. 

See the other backward style: Material empowerment/only provides tangible materials to the beneficiary/creates no more tangible materials/creates no jobs and empowers no one.

A sustainable youth empowerment is a process and not a one day event of distributing wheel barrows, motorbikes, and tricycles.

 Anthony IKE Otikpa, Executive Director, Fyid.org writes from Lagos, Nigeria