Winding up Youth

A service that been involved with 2398 schools, 1811 businesses and 1986 community organisations throughout Australia will literally be thrown on the tip at the end of this month. The intellectual property gained from its operations, the people who have gained specialist skills from their work and the documentation recording how some goals were achieved and the learning’s from mistakes made will all just be shown the door. A victim of the tough love federal budget, most of us will know or frankly care little of its demise as there will be minor if any media coverage of the closure. That’s a huge shame as it is an organisation involved in dealing with arguably Australia’s biggest issue, youth unemployment. The organisation is called YouthInvest. Its primary task was to broker partnerships between schools and business to enhance the employment opportunities of school leavers. One may think an easy task as both organisations would support this outcome, but achieving it is as youth unemployment figures suggest is another matter. Even small wins like students gaining recognition for practical and theoretical work in age care takes time and negotiation to achieve. Business has made general statements for decades about how students aren’t job ready. Schools countering students need broad education and skills to have a more fulfilling post school life. So like (and described as) silo’s, business and education, generally stay as separate entities each pursuing their primary objectives. Yet greater involvement of business in education and vice versa is necessary to help address youth unemployment. YouthInvest facilitated greater engagement between the 2 silos; the knowledge they’ve gained should not just now be discarded. As sure enough in time government funding will be found to fund something similar to YouthInvest and they’ll have to start from scratch; building new relationships, developing policy and processes, making the same mistakes, etc. All the while some older person in the room will be thinking what a waste of time and money, if only they had retained what knowledge YouthInvest had acquired when it existed they be that much further ahead in tackling youth unemployment. This is the waste Governments need to be also looking at stopping; the continual reinvention of the wheel. Before the doors of YouthInvest close can at least one elected government representative ensure its documented knowledge is retained.