Want to start a business? Stuck in a dead-end job? Got no job at all? It's likely that Jamaica's two-year-old Work Force Development Consortium can help.
More than 1,000 persons have registered with the consortium's Labor Force Service Center, and of these, 700 have benefited from programs designed to improve workers' skills and companies' personnel management practices.
The service center is particularly proud of its state-of-the-art learning laboratory, which offers individualized programs for upgrading skills in such areas as entrepreneurship, employability and communications. Some 600 persons have received training in areas ranging from computer applications to painting.
Many participants in the training programs, a large percentage of them women, have been promoted or have gone on to other jobs. Others were happy to hold onto the job they have, according to Don McDowell, the service center's information systems manager.
The work of the consortium also benefits companies. For example, 11 firms faced with the need to reduce payrolls have received help in designing a program of career advice and counseling, job placement, and workshops on developing entrepreneurial skills for those seeking to start their own businesses.
As the consortium becomes better known, it is forging partnerships with other groups seeking to improve their ability to provide human resource development services. The groups include a computer education foundation, an adult literacy program, a hotel and a tourist association. In addition, the consortium is helping to establish a national system of labor market information that includes public and private sector statistics.
Bolivia: Getting Kids Back In School
Samuel Ardaya Rivera, 13, knows first hand how hard it is to attend school when you're dirt poor.
The little he makes washing auto windshields on the streets of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, goes to help with home expenses and pay for school supplies, according to the newspaper El Mundo. Life is a struggle, and for many children like Rivera, school is an unaffordable luxury.
Helping to get working children off the streets and into the classroom, and at the same time strengthen parental involvement in their children's education, is the aim of a new project being carried out by nongovernmental groups in Santa Cruz as well as the cities of La Paz, El Alto and Cochabamba. Financed with the help of a $2.65 million IDB grant, the program is benefiting 1,900 children from extremely poor families--21 percent of the total number of working children in those cities--with after-school tutoring, school supplies, clothing, snacks and meals.
In Santa Cruz, each of the three institutions carrying out the program has contracted eight tutors. Their main job is to help the children keep on top of their school work as well as engage them in recreational, artistic, cultural and science activities.
The program has resulted in a significant decline in school dropout and repetition rates. In fact, a year into the program, 90 percent of the 1,900 participating children completed the school year.
An important side effect of the tutoring is strengthening the children's self-esteem, which in many cases has been damaged by their work experiences and family situation.