Jacqueline Garcia

Economic inclusion of youth opportunity,

GOYN CDMX

I am Jaqueline García, I am 25 years old. I was a young person until a couple of years ago. Afterwards, thanks to well-implemented public policies and the coordinated efforts of the private sector, the public sector and civil society, I began a process of social mobility. 

I come from more than three generations dedicated to street commerce, to informality; therefore, the exercise of freedom in life decisions at the educational and work level is a very personal issue for me.

I strongly believe in representation, support and opportunity and how that changes lives. That is where job placement programs are important. We all have a story of a first job, of those first job opportunities and we all know perfectly well what systemic barriers we faced. In my case, the school was very far away, it was not decentralized, I did not have enough financial resources to attend school and the area I lived in was violent and remains dangerous.

Over the years, accompanying different processes with people, youth groups and multi-stakeholder groups, I realize that the barriers are endless. For example, the barriers faced by young people seeking opportunity in social reintegration processes, young people in migration processes, and young people who experience very deep processes of violence.

All these barriers cannot be solved with a single initiative. When we talk about public employability policy, it implies a deep understanding of these barriers and the intersections that affect all of us. Why? Do you know what happens when young people want to hire themselves? Let's look at an example. I go to school and in high school they teach me certain things that seem to be important for the labor market. But when I go out into the labor market, they tell me that this no longer works, because that happened 10 years ago. Ok, chin. And then they tell me, ok, maybe you do work, but there is also discrimination out there and there are a lot of other reasons why you cannot advance. If you are lucky, you find civil society that supports some socio-emotional and technical skills. Then, what happens? All these incredible actions are disjointed. 

Public employability policy requires socio-emotional and technical skills for employment. But first, we need to understand employment in all its forms and in its relationship with decent work, addressing the ventures that are in the formal and informal sectors, formal and informal jobs.

To create these public policies, we need a multi-sector agreement aimed at creating these effective job placement programs. We need a well-coordinated multi-stakeholder collaboration that guarantees the efficiency of resources.  

I believe in the power of collaborative work. Let's work together to make entrepreneurship a dignified and sustainable way of working for young people, to eradicate precarious work, so that young people know and exercise their labor rights, so that young people have the opportunity to access higher secondary education without discrimination and with schemes that allow them to complete, so that employers improve and correct their discriminatory and violent practices. In other words, we develop initiatives and projects to generate long-term systemic changes to reverse the trends that affect the free exercise of the right to decent work.

Today we call on everyone to join in building a comprehensive youth employment policy in Mexico City. We call on everyone to recognize that individual efforts, while necessary and powerful, can be strengthened through collaborative work in multi-sector, multi-actor networks.