Over the next three years, the company will create 9,000 jobs, 6,600 opportunities, and it will provide 560,000 young people with advice on finding jobs
Public-private initiatives are becoming some of the most effective tools to combat youth unemployment around the world. Latin America, where one out of every eight people under the age of 25 cannot find a job, is fertile ground where this type of agreement is flourishing. The latest has just been signed. Nestlé and the International Youth Agency for Latin America (OIJ) have signed an Alliance for Youth Employability, designed to promote employment and to provide young people in the region with advice on looking for jobs.
The multinational is planning to generate more than 9,000 jobs and 6,600 opportunities for trainees, apprentices, and grant-holders by 2018. In addition, about 560,000 young people will receive training to increase their employment prospects. This overall initiative focuses on five fields of action: promoting dual education programmes, promoting vocational guidance programmes, promoting the creation of internship programmes, promoting the entrepreneurial spirit, and supporting the development of digital skills.
Action plan
Based on these five pillars, Nestlé and the OIJ shall jointly develop an action plan to set out specific goals to address youth employment in Latin America, which will begin in the four countries that belong to the Pacific Alliance: Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. The plan will be presented in the coming month of May at the II Pacific Alliance Youth Meeting, which will take place in Chile. At the same time, both entities shall promote an active participation programme through National Youth Forums that will enable them to identify challenges and strategies to deal with job insertion processes.
“At Nestlé, we are proud to contribute to building a promising future for young people and we firmly believe that we can generate a significant impact throughout Latin America by joining forces with the OIJ. This alliance will allow us to further expand our commitments, help young people look for jobs and offer young people a way of joining the job market”, said Laurent Freixe, Executive Vice President of Nestlé for America.
The secretary general of the OIJ, Max Trejo, emphasised that with this agreement “the OIJ shall continue its consolidation as an active international body and a meeting point for institutions, therefore representing a fundamental pillar in the implementation of the Latin-American Youth Covenant and responding to the demands of Latin-American youth regarding employment issues”.
