400 Youth Empowered Through J4Y Project

The Employers’ Consultative Association of Malawi-ECAM has successfully placed 400 young people in different organisations to gain work experience under the Jobs For Youth-J4Y project despite the Covid-19 pandemic.

This project targets four sectors namely: Agriculture, ICT, Manufacturing and Small-Scale Mining. A total of 400 youth where 243 are males representing 61 percent and 157 females representing 39 percent are doing internship in 117 organisations.

In a statement made by ECAM Executive Director George Khaki says 2020 was an extremely challenging year in the world of work and having employers hosting interns in their work place is a huge commitment by the industry to address youth unemployment.

He said: “companies adopted different measures to keep the work place running including working in shifts, working from home and reducing pay but that did not stop some employers to incorporate interns in their work place”.

“Employers commitment to address the crisis of youth unemployment amidst the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial, hence we encourage employers to create internship programs to tackle skills gaps and mismatch challenges as Covid-19 has driven business to think beyond to ensure business survival”, said Khaki

Khaki  said although Malawi did not have a full lockdown in 2020, the measures that were put in place to avoid the spread of Covid -19 caused major disruptions to the local economy and labour market. Workers, especially those in the informal economy, which employs more than 80 percent of the labour force, lost

significant amounts of their labour income.

ECAM facilitates the implementation of the internship programme by identifying host institutions and attachment of interns. In this arrangement the host institutions’ role is to impart skills and mentor the interns so that they gain practical working experience in their relevant field of study and gain entrepreneurship skills. Payment of monthly stipend is made by the J4Y through another independent institution.