North Cotabato’s Youth Assured Of Education, Jobs

North Cotabato’s Youth Assured Of Education, Jobs
In a conversation with about 250 young leaders in the City of Kidapawan yesterday, some of whom were not even born yet when I first served as Governor in 1998, I was able to confirm my nagging suspicion that unemployment is high among the youth.
When I asked who among them had graduated from college, at least a dozen young people stood up and they all told me that they did not have jobs.
This was not a shocking information for me because while the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) which had long gained the notoriety of presenting flawed data and statistics announced that employment in the country is at a 96.9%, I believed that unemployment, especially among the new graduates, was very high.
It was validated yesterday when 12 out of 12 highly educated city youth said they were not employed while the others who were still in senior high or in college were not even sure if they too could find jobs.
After listening to the youth share their dreams and plans yesterday, I made two commitments:
1. Every youth in the Province of Cotabato who would like to go to technical school, college or even medical school is assured of a scholarship on the condition that they will join and support all community projects like the Greening Program;
2. I will establish Agro-Industrial Facilities to create jobs for the youth while turning our farmers’ crops into high value products and this would include processing our fruits, establishing a province-wide Halal Meat Production Program and turning our raw rubber products into motorcycle tires and others.
These programs, actually are already included in the 5-Year Development Master Plan which I crafted shortly after I decided to vie for the Governorship again.
Earlier, I shared with Kidapawan City Mayor Paolo Evangelista my plan to reform the Sangguniang Kabataan by guiding them. away from such inane projects like beauty contrasts to more meaningful livelihood projects in their respective barangays.
A real Youth Leadership Training Program will also be started to prepare them to become leaders of our province in the future who are motivated to serve the community.
This is my promise to the Youth of North Cotabato.
#ChildrenAreOurFuture!