By Lilian Urueta Cruz
Director of GOYN Barranquilla
Barranquilla, the main city in the Colombian Caribbean, is the new community of the GOYN network in Latin America. GOYN is an initiative dedicated to promoting transformations at a local level that allow young people to connect with opportunities and develop their potential, fostering their capacity for agency and well-being.
Our mission is to connect various actors from the public, private, academic sectors, youth groups and, of course, young people, to implement joint actions that facilitate their access to education, employment and entrepreneurship. We do this in a special way with young people at the center of the discussions, participating and contributing to the construction of solutions, listening to them attentively and identifying the challenges they face in carrying out their life projects.
The first step in fulfilling this mission was to learn about the data on the city's young population and understand the gaps and challenges they face, getting to know the stories and realities of young people beyond the statistics.
Barranquilla has a population of nearly 2 million inhabitants, including its metropolitan area. In this vibrant city, which is not only a key geographic point for commerce and industry, but also cultural, there are 497 thousand people between 14 and 28 years old, of which 200,767 do not study or work or are in informal employment; that is, they are #Young People with Potential.
The figures show us that, according to data from Dane (2022), 41% of young people living in the territory are not accessing opportunities, with 21% of them outside of education or employment, and 20% linked to informal employment.
After analyzing this panorama and the perceptions, realities and stories about the barriers that young people face, in a research carried out by GOYN Barranquilla with the participation of Accenture, the Universidad del Norte and from a co-creation exercise with the organizations of the ecosystem of opportunities for youth, the report "GOYN Barranquilla, Youth with potential 2023”, presented in the city on October 20.
The report is a call to action that shows the reality of young people who do not have access to education, formal employment or entrepreneurship, and proposes four key areas or territories of opportunity to change the system towards one that eliminates structural injustices that young people experience: empowering narratives, bridges to opportunities, tools for life and comprehensive guidance.
The voice of the youth was the protagonist of the report. What is the youth of Barranquilla like? They are cheerful, effusive, capable and very creative. Reflecting this creativity and their proactive attitude, the youth advisory group of GOYN Barranquilla rejected the label “NINI” with the slogan “Qué nini ni qué na”, extending an invitation to the city to change the mentality about them, in a positive narrative in accordance with their realities, opportunities and capabilities.
The disconnection
The report shows that of the 200,767 young people who are not studying, working or have an informal job, only 18% managed to graduate from post-secondary education, 22% did not finish high school and 60% barely have a high school diploma. Additionally, it highlights the population with the highest risk of disconnecting from the education and employment path, which are young people who are lagging behind in basic and secondary education, a total of 20,471 in 2022. A situation that is added to the high dropout rate in higher education, reflected in the fact that in the department of Atlántico only 4 out of 10 young people who enter higher education complete their training.
Perceptions of youth
Young people with potential consider that various characteristics related to their origin, gender identity, sex, motherhood, belonging to ethnic minorities, disability conditions, socioeconomic level and even place of residence keep them away from opportunities. In addition, they say that there is an imbalance between their expectations (goals and dreams) and the reality that their context offers them to achieve them.
A joint vision to break down the barriers that prevent young people from accessing opportunities
The report is the result of the coordination of actors and at the same time a tool to generate greater coordination and the reinforcement of actions in light of a shared vision on youth. It allows contextualizing the formulation of interventions and the construction of a joint measurement that aims to monitor the impact on young people and develop learning and knowledge management of the ecosystem.
It is a call to connect, building bridges between actors in the ecosystem, between these and young people and between the young people themselves in the city and the metropolitan area, understanding what this diagnosis tells us about the different areas of disconnection experienced by Young People with Potential in our territory.