THE Sustained Youth Development and Research Inc., (SSYDR) has launched its Employment Attack 102-job-readiness summer camp.
Executive Director of SSYDR, Magda Wills, said Employment Attack 102 is geared at equipping youth with job-readiness skills over a four-week interactive training process and one week of web development training.

“After the five week training, we will work with each youth to develop life plans then assist them with securing employment or other livelihood opportunities within a month of the training completion,” said Wills during a press briefing on Wednesday.
The first Employment Attack 102 in 2018 benefitted 153 young people from schools and communities across Regions Three, Four, Five, Six and 10.
“This year we engaged the services of STEM Guyana, which is currently offering one week of web development training to our youth across Regions Two, Three, Four, Five and Six,” said Wills.

This collaboration allows youth not only to gather key work-ready skills, but also to become even more marketable with new abilities to develop websites.
To date, through funding at various times from ExxonMobil Guyana, SSYDR has been able to reach approximately 400 young persons across six of Guyana’s ten administrative regions. SSYDR hopes to expand to the hinterland regions within another year.
SSYDR was birthed out of a five-year USAID-funded Skills and Knowledge for Youth Employment (SKYE) project.

This SKYE project came out of President Barrack Obama’s Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, which was aimed at reducing youth crime and violence by offering education, skill building and employment opportunities for at-risk youth in Guyana.
On completion of the five-year funding cycle from USAID and with the very team of professionals, SKYE transitioned into a local not-for-profit organisation, which is fully equipped with all the tools and materials, methodologies and personnel to carry on the good work centered on livelihood opportunities for youth.

SSYDR Inc. has as its vision: “inspired youth transforming themselves, their communities, their nation” and has a mission to “promote youth access to resources, opportunities and ongoing support for lifelong learning, leadership and livelihoods towards the reduction of violence, crime and poverty.”
Youth from lower performing secondary schools and from lower socio economic conditions stand a greater chance of becoming unemployed as well as becoming entangled with the law.

“As such, we have recognised the need for those who have recently completed their secondary education or would have dropped out after the third form, to be targeted through a system of training coupled with coaching,” said Wills.
Further there are communities with problems of systemic crime that the group has chosen to target as it is their firm belief that this will aid in Guyana’s fight to development, a fight that can only be won with the reduction in youth vulnerability to poverty, crime and violence.
These were all reasons placed before ExxonMobil Guyana when they designed their youth empowerment programme, which saw SSYDR working with youth from the Leopold South Georgetown area. They benefitted from training and coaching towards livelihood opportunities.

ExxonMobil’s Public and Government Affairs Manager, Deedra Moe, said employment readiness should not be underestimated.
“It has a multiplier effect in being able to help not only the youth, but potentially the communities to which they are returning…You really can underestimate the value of job-readiness…It is a matter of individual empowerment of making sure that you’re able to be employed and provide an opportunity into the future,” Moe said.