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CHOMECO:A Taboo to Eradicate. A Plaidoyer for an Adapted and Reformed Vocational EducationAn article demonstrating the correlation between unemployment among youth and the quality of vocational education. In this article I make pragmatic recommendations on how to create sustainable programs that address this problem If you’re not Haitian, I can already see you raising your eye brows reading this article. What in the world is Chomeco, you’re probably asking? Chomeco is a product of the Haitian’s use of his acute sense of humor in dealing with the most serious and unbearable situations. It became part of the vernacular in the 1980s when state college or university entrance exam standards were made tougher to respond to the high demand for admission. For instance, 1000 students would be competing over 100 available seats at the school of medicine. At that time, private universities were quasi-inexistent and there wasn’t a job market for unskilled inexperienced high school graduates. What made the matter worse is that both parents and students, victims of mythical social expectations, would target specific professions that society viewed as ideal, noble, and prestigious: Everyone wanted to be either a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, an agronomist, or a nurse. Everything else was considered as B-rated alternatives. Therefore the students who weren’t admitted into their program of predilection would not try anything else. They would go back home contemplating to try again the following year and remaining unemployed at the same time living at their parents ‘expenses. When you asked them what they were doing, they replied “I’m in CHOMECO." Chomeco is a combination of the French word Chomage meaning unemployment and the suffix CO for company. They just made fun of a demeaning and undignified situation. Things like learning a manual trade such as carpentry, mechanics or working as a cashier, waiter or even a teacher were perceived as defeating the whole purpose of 14 years of schooling. Consequently was created a sub-sector in our society, more importantly in our economy that was totally dependent on meager household incomes and characteristically unproductive. This created a clog inside the pipeline for the normal influx of fresh labor force into the economy. We should specify as well that we never had a dynamic job market where there exists equilibrium in the employment demand and supply. The government sector doesn’t have enough capacity to absorb the employable portion of the Chomeco population. The private sector including the manufactures and the businesses owned by the elites were unwilling to reinvest their profits into the economy to create more jobs for the youth. CHOMECO remained a cancer for economic growth and the “anomaly” of our education system for a long time and still persists today in a less significant amplitude. The end of the 1990s and the arrival of the millennium saw the emergence of two major actors on the scene in Haiti that will provoke a slight change in the equation: The telecommunications sector with a giant such as Digicel and the multinational non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the occupying forces of the United Nations (MINUSTHA) will train and employ a substantial portion of the CHOMECO labor force. According to a World Bank's 2012 report, Haiti has a current unemployment rate of 7.00% (2012) and a current youth unemployment rate of 17.40% (2012). We can do better if we first fall in agreement that the problem of youth unemployment in Haiti is both economic and correlated with the deficiencies in our vocational training system. What could be the rational, realistic approach to eradicate CHOMECO? A.Changing the Haitian Youth's mentality vis a vis the Philosophy of Self-Sufficiency I remember that the previous generations of Haitians were proud, hard-working individuals who would do any type of work to raise and educate their children. They didn't have to be doctors to do so. Their pragmatic philosophy of life was rooted in their sense of dignity. There was a time where New York, Florida, and Canada's employers were praying God to send them more Haitian workers. Because they were disciplined, efficient, proud, and honest. Today's Haitian youth are talented, they have great dreams and drive, but they are missing that little element that used to make the Haitian entity unique: Pride and dignity. I don't see that sense of urgency to take care of their responsibilities. Thanks to the BET, VH1 revolution, now few youth in Haiti want to be a good agronomist, doctor, a good carpenter, a good farmer, a good nurse. Everyone wants to be the next Wyclef or Beyonce. We've seen a multiplication of great rappers, great bands, terrific musicians. Most of them lack formal training and can't sustain themselves. They have no professional /vocational backup. We need a revolution where the government and the private sector would invest heavily in the creation of fundamental job/vocational training for the youth who have the necessity to go on the labor market immediately with no transition in a college or university. B. Making Vocational training mandatory before High School Graduation The Ministry of Education and Vocational Training should integrate a mandatory vocational element into the secondary curriculum so that any high school graduate would be automatically employable right after graduation in case he or she doesn't make it to university during that year. Some of the trades I would suggest are Paramedics, Reforestation Technician, Customer Service Clerk, Paralegal, Culinary Arts, Performing Arts, Fine Arts, Music Studio Productions, Cinematography, Nurse's Aide (Auxiliaire), Agro-Business, Small Business Development (Entrepreneurship) C. Vocational School Accreditation It is imperative that we slow down the proliferation of Business and trade schools by establishing tougher school accreditation standards and encouraging competition to enhance the quality of the training they provide. Give them access to funding so they can meet the 21st century norms and buy the technology needed. Government should create adequate experimental pilot vocational campuses all over the country as models for the private sector to follow. D. Relevance and Labor Supply The type of reform that needs to happen in the way vocational training is addressed should rely on 2 parameters: Relevance and supply. That means you need to train people for a career that is relevant for the job market and for which there is a need. Did you ever see someone train to become a baseball or a cricket player in Haiti? It's because there's no baseball market in Haiti. Is an investor willing now to start a team and build a stadium in Haiti? No. Therefore there's a vacuuom on the supply side. I believe the earthquake made it easier for Haiti to make an assessment of its lacks and needs and more importantly of its priorities. Here is a sample of vocational training that I believe would be relevant in our current conjecture: * Road and Building Construction-Heavy Equipment * Electrician, Mechanics, Weldding, Carpentry * Rescue Worker-Natural Disater workers * Paramedics * Endemy & Epidemy Intervention (SNEM like) * Agrobusiness-Food Processing * Forest/Wild life Guard-Reforestation Worker * Electronics/Telecommunications/Tablets Manufacture * Solar Energy * Entrepreneurship E. Incentive Creation We need to create labor Intensive inititiatives to involve the youth in work and business development.For instance, if we could find the funds necessary to hire the services of 100,000 young people in each geographic department to do reforestation, erosion prevention over a six-month period, that would considerably reduce the CHOMECO population by half in the short term. Another sector that could absorb the CHOMECO components is the agrobusiness. Let's encourage the youth to organise themselves into agrobusiness cooperatives giving them access to funding and loans and by strategically placing small farm housing units where they can meet, work, and sleep. Those labor activities may even cause a reverse exodus from Port-Au-Prince to the country side helping that way the decentralization process. The Ministry of Education could also integrate part of he CHOMECO population into its literacy (alphabetization) campaign. Instead of Conclusion Instead of concluding this article the conventional way, I would like to share with my readership one idea of mine that showcases the model of initiatives that can help reduce unemployment among the youth population. I want to gather a sample of 10 honest young men and women in Cap-Haitian as a start. We will start a business group with a well-written business plan. After a cost-benefit analysis, We will acquire a warehouse that has 4 compartments and we'll bring instructors along the way from some US training school to help. We will buy used bicycles and motorcycles from Miami and the Dominican Republic. In the first compartment of the warehouse, we will teach the young men and women how to break apart and assemble a bicycle and a motorcycle. We would keep the repairable bikes and sell the rest of the parts to the public. In compartment 2 we will train the youth how to repair, paint and decorate a bicycle or motorcycle. Compartment 3 will the be showroom where the final repaired items are exposed for sale. The 4th compartment will be a lunch/conference room where the business associates can eat and be trained on work ethics, business principles, customer service, marketing, public speaking, and computer skills. Each associate will have a salary and part of the profit will be saved for business expansion and product development. If the experiment is successful, the group will recreate the same scenario in a different city of the country. Offer If anyone reading this article has the funding capacity to make this project come through, we would love to partner with you to show the way to our CHOMECO victims, and bring this idea to the highest level of success. Leave me a message in my Facebook inbox or email me at mym226@aol.com. Rubrique: Education Auteur: Jean Montreuil | Date: 18 Juin 2015 |
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