Organisers of the historic Nestlé Caribbean Youth Summit are insisting that their target of finding new jobs for a minimum 1,000 youth under age 30 within three years will be met.

The two-day virtual event, set for Tuesday, October 5, and Wednesday, October 6, starting at 1:00 pm (Jamaica time) on both days, has as its objective a global ambition to increase the employability of 10 million young people between the ages of 16 and 29 by year 2030. The event is targeting youth in that same age category and it is free of charge to participants.

Officials behind the event, driven by International Labour Organization (ILO) numbers that two out of five youth are either unemployed, or in perennial low-paying jobs that do not allow them to achieve basic goals, underscored that there will be limited, or no growth in communities if there is no reversal of those figures.

That is why corporate organisations are being approached to join the renewal, through the Alliance for Youth, and commit themselves to providing more jobs for the vulnerable population.

The focus will be on preparing a target of 10,000 youth in the English, French, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean to realise and maximise their potential in the focus areas of (1) employment and employability, (2) entrepreneurship, and (3) agri-preneurship, the latter zooming on agriculture-based initiatives.

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne will deliver the formal address. He is also chairman of the Caribbean Community (Caricom).

Featured speaker will be star of reality pitch show Shark Tank, and founder CEO of apparel company FUBU, Daymond John, but there will be a long, compelling list of others who will address various issues.

“We believe, even more so, that youth needed to be inspired, they need to be excited, because we are seeing there is a restriction of economies across the Caribbean spurred on even more by COVID-19,” stated head of corporate communications at Nestlé Anglo Dutch Caribbean, Siti Jones Gordon, while praising the company’s CEO for Zone Americas, Laurent Freixe, who led the creation of the programme, due to his concern about the high unemployment rate among young people in Europe at the time.

Jones-Gordon said that the reason for hosting the summit now was because “There are so many youths who are budding entrepreneurs, or are already operating as entrepreneurs, and need support and guidance, or who are graduating with great grades but finding difficulty in getting jobs because there are fewer jobs available.”

She also underscored that young people are more vulnerable to losing their jobs under the system of last in, first out.

Jones Gordon said the programme has had an impact on 38,000 young people in the region in four key areas or “pillars”: getting skilled through workshops to increase employability implemented with the assistance of Nestlé’s Alliance for YOUth partners (governments, foundations, youth organisations, academia and the private sector): getting more opportunities through internships and “enternships” (entry-level positions); getting support via mentorship and networking: and getting hired, with 218 young people hired for vacant positions at Nestlé Trinidad and Jamaica over the past six years.

Initially, Nestlé had planned to have the summit in 2020, but plans changed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. They said too, that more young people could participate now that it is being held virtually.