Indonesia Youth Gain Employability Skills and Strengthen Local Fishing Industry

Families living in coastal communities in West Java, Indonesia, are blessed with an abundant supply of Kuniran fish that is in great demand locally and globally. Yet many of those families have been unable to climb out of poverty due, in part, to low investments in the industry and lack of relevant job training skills, particularly among the youth. In response, the International Youth Foundation (IYF) established the Education & Employment Alliance (EEA) in Indonesia to help strengthen the fish filet industry by providing the necessary capital, equipment, and job training opportunities. As a result, some 20 local youth were trained as machine operators. “Before working in the fish filet factory, people underestimated me as an unemployed youth,” explains Dairin Aditiya, a 20-year-old who is now an oven machine operator. “Now, I am proud that I have a job and can support my family.”

EEA is a USAID-funded alliance-building initiative of IYF that worked in six countries in the Middle East and Asia that had high youth unemployment rates to improve educational and employment opportunities for underserved youth. In 2006, IYF and Indonesia Business Links (IBL) launched the Indonesia program. Its goal: to develop a partnership of public, private and NGOs working together to equip youth ages 18 to 24 with the necessary employability skills to move them into meaningful and productive jobs. Within a few months, the EEA project here created an estimated 250 additional jobs for local residents, the majority of whom were women and youth previously living in poverty.

technical skills usaid job training employability