In Paraguay, thousands of young people face a reality marked by unemployment, informal work, job insecurity, and lack of access to technical training or higher education. Many live in peripheral neighborhoods where informality, forced migration, violence, and state failure prevail. They find themselves without clear prospects, with few tools to build a dignified future, without support networks or guidance, without spaces for organization, but with the will to cope and tackle these realities.
Faced with this situation, the YCW in Paraguay is taking action within communities, organizing young people according to their concrete needs and accompanying them in their personal and collective training process in order to transform their lives and their environment.
The essential role of training centers
The work carried out by JOC Paraguay combines vocational training, community organization, and support for young workers.
It has three objectives: strengthening the personal and technical skills of young people who are unemployed or in precarious situations; promoting solidarity economy as an organizational and economic alternative; and encouraging young people to play an active role and become politically engaged based on their concrete reality.
The training centers offer practical courses such as cooking, holistic beauty, cell phone repair, cutting and sewing, as well as literacy classes for young people and adults.
In addition, as a group, young people carry out activities that have an impact on the community: planting trees, embellishing public spaces, manufacturing cleaning products, reusing plastics for packaging, and helping job seekers write resumes. Courses are also organized to train cashiers, in order to facilitate professional integration, as well as other short courses that are of interest to young people.
A comprehensive process that starts with reality and leads to activism
First, the realities of young people are identified: through review of their lives and grassroots support, young people who need training, employment, or literacy skills are detected.
Second, training is organized: training centers coordinate technical courses based on the skills and interests of participants.
Third, grassroots groups organize community activities focused on environmental protection, recycling, and peer support.
Fourth, comprehensive training is offered, meaning that each course is supplemented by YCW training on labor rights, solidarity, dignified work, and community involvement.
Finally, youth leadership is encouraged by motivating participants to get involved in the life of the movement.
A project that transforms and revives hope
The YCW project in Paraguay is transforming young people, and the results are spectacular: increased self-esteem, new skills, hope for the future, active participation in the YCW organization and community life, creation of small solidarity networks, increased critical awareness, and organization to face precariousness.
In the future, the movement intends to consolidate a solidarity economy network with young workers (savings circles, entrepreneurial initiatives, among others), strengthen training centers as spaces for initiation, integrate action into national campaigns, and replicate the experience in other territories.
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