Your chance to vote for your favourite video and win an iPod
British Council’s Enterprise Challenge engages young people in competitions that develop their entrepreneurial skills.
Each National winning teams has produced a short video of their enterprising idea so you can vote for your favourite video and help your chosen team become the British Council’s Global Enterprise Champions. A random voter from each participating country (Bangladesh, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Pakistan, South Africa, Turkey, Uzbekistan) and the UK will have a chance to win an I-Pod.
Teams of young people in participating countries are asked to develop a business idea from a set scenario which they present to a panel of judges which includes employers, entrepreneurs and Ministerial representatives. Teams compete with other national teams to become the National winners.
National winners are then asked to produce a short video which represents their entry to Global Skills for Employability Enterprise Challenge. This year participating countries include Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. The theme of their presentation is “If the Olympic / Paralympic Games were to take place in your country, what business would you develop?”
There can only be one winning team!
- Extremely cost effective in comparison to other service delivery programs
- Youth Service Network does not count only on the assistance provided by the YES Network Pakistan but mostly rely on tapping local resources or sharing local resources.
- Revenue generation from the local community is the unique feature of the Youth Service Network. Most of the service programs around the world provide resources to young people in terms of stipends etc but our youth service network generate revenue from the local community by providing services.
- Youth Service Network promotes bottom-to-bottom or horizontal collaboration. YES Network Pakistan encourages members of different networks to visit and assist each other in delivering services and meeting challenges.
- Since youth service network is based at grassroots level and run by local young people. It is always in touch with the communities.
- Youth Service Network is encouraged to identify areas for collective in accordance with the needs of its community hence it is very close to reality.
- Youth Service Network provides an exiting opportunity to all public and private organizations to join for enhancing its outreach and consumer base.
Most groups need someone to act as a leader. The leader could be the person who started the Youth Service Network or someone who the group elects. Depending on your Youth Service Network this could be a different member each week or it could be a regular facilitator. If you are a leader you have an important responsibility to the Youth Service Network. One of the leader’s main roles is to get people to contribute equally and to listen to one another. Stimulate discussion by putting a question to the group as a whole to get everyone thinking to the answer then ask a specific member of the group to give you an answer.
Try to give everyone to opportunity to answer questions, if you rely on the same few people all the time the others will feel less involved. If you cannot remember who you have asked already then asked for someone who has not answered yet. If the participants are very quite you may need to use more question. Make sure the questions are not too difficult for the group to answer. When encouraging a shy group, it can be useful to ask a question to everyone and ask for one reply from each person.
Ask different people to start the answers and make your choice unpredictable. If you start always at the person to the left of you for example, you may find that no one will want to sit there.
Two common problems in many groups are that some people maybe very quiet, and others may dominate and take too much of the group’s time and attention. There are many different reasons for under-or over-participation, and there may be underlying problems that you do not know about. Sometimes these problems just solve themselves with no interventions, and sometimes the group members may take the responsibility on themselves. In some cases, a group leader may need to take action.
It is a body of not less than 5 and more than 15 young people in between the ages of 10-30 who share common interest and committed to bring change in their personal and community lives. It is based at grassroots level. Youth Service Network is required to dedicate at-least 30 hours per week as a team for at-least one year of their lives for the realization of its self-designed social change program. It is compulsory that the Youth Service Network should have elected leader, deputy leader and treasurer to run and lead its activities. Youth Service Network is provided at the time of joining the organization a constitution outlining major responsibilities and operational procedures about the functioning of the Network. It is also provided tools, resources, guidance, material and connections as well as continuous support throughout the year for improving and expanding the program. Youth Service Network is entitled to conceptualize, plan, implement and monitor its social change program. These programs may be but not limited to various needs of the community. These needs may be: academic, community service, skill development, child care, health, environment, current issues, disability awareness and resources, entertainment, gender issues, leadership, peer assistance etc.
“In our daily lives we meet with so many people who criticize everything or find faults in everything. It is an easy job to criticize, speculate and talk about issues. We should not forget that nothing has ever accomplished through speculations discussions and meetings alone. True and lasting accomplishments come from those who are ready to take the heat-off and put themselves in the line of fire. We live in a dangerous world where we are bleeding with disrespect, intolerance, uncertainties and violence but still if there is any hope it comes from those people who are ready to go against the flow to do what is right and just rather than what is easy to talk and speculate. Youth Service Network is an opportunity for young people to build a new societal structure by doing what they feel need to be done”. (Ali Raza Khan, Founder and Director of PNYS/YES and Ashoka Fellow)
1. Academic Accomplishment
Academic achievement is a challenge throughout the educational system. Whether it is the youngster getting ready for school, the elementary student preparing basic skills, the high school student meeting educational standards, or the university honing skills for a job; each level of education builds for the next and on the next. It is in higher education’s best interests to help younger students so that youngsters don’t arrive on campus needing remedial assistance. The Education Trust estimates that 30% of freshman students need remediation. If you follow the trail backwards, one discovers that these changes happened in varying degrees from the earliest days of education.
2. Workforce Skills
“Students need to understand the relevance of what is being taught in the classroom to their own lives and their future careers. These connections are often unclear,” notes Jeff Mays, Illinois Chamber of Commerce. Several years ago, the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS ) reported, “That more than half our young people leave school without the knowledge or foundation to find and hold a good job.” Clearly students need more exposure to the real world.
3. Citizenship and Responsibility
“There are strong signs of disengagement of youth from society, increasing alienation and disengagement from their schools, parents, and society. The flourishing of civilizations has brought about unlimited wealth and comfort, and at the same time, impoverishment of the soul” (Jim Kielsmeier, National Youth Leadership Council).
A Nation of Spectators describes the status of our society. “During the past generation, our families have come under intense pressure, and many have crumbled. Neighborhood and community ties have frayed. Many of our streets and public spaces have become unsafe. Our public schools are mediocre for most students, and catastrophic for many. Our character-forming institutions are enfeebled. Much of our popular culture is vulgar, violent, and mindless. Much of our pubic square is coarse and uncivil. Public participation is at depressed levels last seen in the 1920′s and the index for civic health has dropped” (National Commission on Civic Renewal).
Educators throughout the country are struggling with the lack of student engagement, graduates who are prepared neither for higher 
education nor for the world of work, and violence in schools. Often students are so removed from education that they sleep through class, which may be welcome to the teacher because teaching can take place rather than dealing with disruptive behaviors. The big question is, how can we engage these students?
“Traditional modes of teaching still dominate most academic classrooms. These classrooms in both schools and universities are dominated by a passive learning process. Teachers and professors stand before a class and tell the students what they should know or they assign reading to convey it. Then to demonstrate their learning, the students are asked to parrot back what they have been told or what they have read. Many classrooms neglect in-depth discussion, student responsibility for the learning of others, and efforts to relate what is studied to their own lives and the world they live in,” Harold Howe, Rockefeller Foundation.
Nearly half of all people in the world are under 25. An estimated 1.7 billion of the global population are young people (10 to 24); youth (15 to 24) comprise 1.1 billion or 18 per cent of the world population and adolescents (10 to 19), 1.2 billion. Young people (10 to 24) comprise almost 30 per cent of the world’s population, the largest generation ever, and are growing in number. If we expand the definition of youth up to 30 to 35 years, we will discover that more than 70% of the world population would be included.
At the moment Pakistan has the largest number of youth in its history. According to Census 1998, youth under the age of 29 constitute 70% of the total population. As much as 64.87% of the young population resides in rural areas and 35.13 in urban areas. The census of 1998 counted 56 million children under the age of 15. There were another 13 million adolescents between the age of 15 to 19 and 11 million youth aged between 20 to 24 years. The youth of Pakistan presents the most promising resource and in huge quantity – a big reservoir of energy. If this energy is put to proper use it will bring about a complete social, economic, culture and ideological revolution in the country. That could contribute significantly to economic growth and poverty alleviation. Indeed it is clear from the experience of many other countries that unless these assets and qualities are given the opportunity to be so applied, they can easily turn to negativism and disruption of the social order. The need, therefore, is to create increasing opportunities for them to develop their potentials, personalities, functional capabilities and to enable them to be productive and socially useful.
