Assisting Solomon’s youth in making the right life choices.
This week I received a letter from a concerned Solomon Islander telling me about the many challenges the young people at home were facing in making the right life choices set against a background of few jobs and high unemployment.
He explained that there were not the opportunities for the youth to engage themselves in gaining basic survival skills in preparation for adult life.
Having followed the local scene for many years, I share the concerns, and I am sure many in the Solomon Islands, especially the young, have the same thoughts and views.
I know, of course, of the good work having been undertaken by Youth@ Work with the support of Australia and a programme designed to enhance the economic opportunities available to unemployed young people to find work or start their own business.
Several of the Youth@ Work graduates have created their own businesses but the greater majority left the training and found there was no work around. Having undergone the practical training course it was natural they became frustrated by the seemingly endless lack of job prospects at home.
I have often tried to put myself in their shoes and why I have written so often about the necessity of job creation and encouraged the government’s fuller participation in off-shore labour schemes, such as in New Zealand, Australian, Taiwan and Canada.
To-date such mobility schemes have secured some employment positions but relatively few when considering the gap between those still needing paid employment back home.
Perhaps, someone might wish to comment with advice on what might be done to alleviate the concerns outlined.
When I left school, now many years ago, I would have found myself like the youth today looking for work and having left school with no life skills training. In those years not long after the end of the second world war, jobs were few and far between and school education, like for myself, had been no great preparation for entry into the workforce mainly concentrated on engineering and manufacturing.
My dilemma was resolved by National Service and being drafted into the military for two years compulsory military training.
National Service as peacetime conscription was formulated by the National Service Act 1948. From 1 January 1949, healthy males 17 to 21 years old were expected to serve in the armed forces for 18 months, and remain on the reserve list for four years.
My time in the British armed forces, serving as a military policeman in Hong Kong gave me the sense of direction and purpose I put to good use in serving for many years in the police services of several dependent and independent countries of the British Commonwealth.
In 2015 His Royal Highness Prince Harry made a call for bringing back conscription by calling for the reintroduction of national service in the UK to give young people "a sense of belonging rather than a sense of violence.”
When I served as the Chief of Police on the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, also with a responsibility for the policing of Ascension Island, I found there was a problem with youth employment quite similar to the situation in the present day Solomon Islands, but not on the same scale in terms of numbers.
I sought to help the youths with their own sense of direction and purpose in life by introducing them to the life changing opportunities for personal development offered by the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme.
The awards recognized the young adults for completing a series of self-improvement exercises modelled on the principles of ‘Six Declines of Modern Youth.”
The Award programme currently operates in over 15 Commonwealth countries, including in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Canada.
I would recommend the DCGA looking introducing the programme to the youth in the Solomon Islands.
During my time in the Royal Hong Kong Police Force in the late 60s there was a Cadet Training School where young men with a desire to ultimately join the police service received basic training in police duties, physical training and academic work, including writing and speaking English.
Many of the cadets on reaching 18 joined the Force while others left to follow their chosen careers in business or the professions.
All of the cadets benefitted from the life skills training, comradeship and work experience which, to this day, serves them well.
As the Commissioner of Police in the Solomon Islands I greatly wanted to start a Cadet Training School, based on the success of the one I had knowledge of in Hong Kong but sadly the onset of civil conflict which started in late 1998 put an end to my ability to see its formation.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
