“The KMYC Youth camp intends to raise awareness on the importance of Human Demographic dividend and encourage young people to go in for skills acquisition with a practical skills training. This will serve as a real life starting point for participants which will be a key indicator of the importance of the gathering with centres on the theme “Pursuance on the Demographic Dividend and Skills acquisition. The UNFPA state of world population report 2014, has clearly showed the need for developing countries like The Gambia with large populations to invest in its youth populace so as to realise its potential of economic gain through a ‘demographic dividend’.
This can occur when a country’s working population is larger than the population that is dependent and younger while the 2014 record of the 1.8 billion young people present an enormous opportunity to transform the future if given the required resource, skills and develop its potential and enhance their health and reproductive issues and most importantly when they are actively involved in policy and decision making processes. It is too easy to talk about the demographic dividend in terms of monetary value, savings and economic growth but it must be pursued by government and its stakeholders to achieve inclusive growth opportunities and well-being for all”.
He postulated that gathering a group of young people for a week-long discussion will engage policy makers, top government institutions and agencies including persons with disability.
Kebbeh further stated that the selection of delegates to the camp will be the exposition of their road-map hence they intend to direct their selection through all the five constituencies / ward, and schools within the municipality.
Jarga Gai, head of logistic and accommodation said: “The statistic of poverty rate has been projected an increase and the fundamental way in which we can address this is to make young people employable. The fact that if they can be employable will give them the opportunity to satisfy their needs, but making young people employable has to do with processing and one of the principles will be giving them the required status that will enable them to attract the jobs and that is what we want to address in this camp.”
He promised that it will be a very unique camp in the sense that it is the first edition for KMYC to host such a camp and it is the first of its kind in the country. “Apart from Nayconf activities, there is no youth gathering that attracts young people coming together again. The camp also seeks to enlighten the youths in KMC by giving them the skills so that they can avoid the ghettos and become more self-reliant, self-employed and to take care of their own needs.
As the head of the committee of logistics and accommodation, as far as we are concerned, at our level we have all necessary proposals that are required to make the camp a success.”
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