Integrated Youth Centers

Integrated Youth Centers Program operated by the National Youth Institute (INJUV) of Chile.

Description of the Experience:

Integrated Youth Centers are a strategic product of INJUV's Line for Citizenship and Youth Partnership Promotion.  These are information and integrated development centers for young people. Their purpose is to foster social and workplace inclusion and better quality of life for the country's young people.

Integrated Youth Centers have sought to create a suitable place for young people, taking into consideration their needs while affording them access to information, counseling, and training in areas of interest to them. Social and community involvement by the youngsters is also encouraged.

Services delivered by these comprehensive care centers include:

• Arts and culture workshops
• Job and academic training workshops 
• Counselling services:  Health and self-care, social service, and information and legal assistance
• Multimedia rooms for individual and collective use
• Music clinics
• Prep courses for university entrance exam

Activities:

Since November 2012, Music Clinics have been conducted in various parts of country. They involve organizing music-related workshops that are conducted by renowned, veteran local artistes and/or bands.  These same artists and/or bands organize a massive closing ceremony where they perform some of their most popular songs.

Outcomes:

The program's most noteworthy accomplishments include:

• Execution of the first music clinics pilot in Punta Arenas.  This activity involved music-related workshops conducted by renowned, veteran local artistes and/or bands sharing about their main themes, experiences, and inspirational stories with a small group (usually about 40) of young people.  Based on the success of these clinics, this activity was replicated in other cities, such as Pucón, Viña del Mar, Constitución, Concepción, and Santiago.
•  BUS INJUV:  This bus travels through the main resorts in regions IV, V, VIII, IX, X, and XIV. Its primary services include: free Internet connection; training in resume preparation; sports workshops; giving out youth cards; and information on offers of youth-related public initiatives.
• Project formulation workshops were held in the Los Lagos Region, after which many youth organizations saw a fall-off in the rates of faulty applications for competitive funding to finance youth social projects.
• The INJUV Integrated Centers’ workshops done by through their Regional Offices in 2011 included a workshop series on "Job Readiness," held in La Serena, Coquimbo Region.  Its purpose was to establish places where young people looking for work could efficiently organize, plan, and evaluate their job searches by equipping them with soft-skills tools to better prepare themselves to enter the job market.  These workshops focused primarily on developing soft skills, capabilities and leadership in youngsters, so that participants could then be more easily integrated into the workforce.  As soon as the job readiness workshop was held, the Coquimbo Regional Office undertook the necessary coordination for job interviews to be conducted and thus to actively participate in job placement for the workshop participants.  Given the success of the 2011 workshops, this year the Regional Office decided to make this benefit for young people a permanent program, dubbed "Youth Job Fair." The Coquimbo Regional Government included this program in its 2010-2014 regional plan. Thanks to these workshops and to their successful promotion of the value of youth to the workplace, young people entered the workforce nationally or regionally through major companies (Enjoy, Coca-Cola, Jumbo, Zandonay, ISS, Mi Café, Dole, McDonald’s, Paris, Correos de Chile, etc.). 

Challenges:

This being essentially a decentralized policy, monitoring these workshops involves a number of challenges, which are being addressed through a computer system that provides significant support in terms of information; as well as through smooth coordination between headquarters and regional offices.  All of this is supported by an internal procedure that was developed in conjunction with the Regional Offices, which gives these documents legitimacy and acceptance.

Lessons learned:

• Budgetary and programmatic decentralization can and should be trusted.
• Young people are one segment of the population eager to participate, as reflected in the concerns they raise at the vast majority of our workshops.

Evaluation:

ASG00558E04.DOC

In 2012, a computer system was developed to organize all information on the workshops (number of workshops, number of participants, attendance rates, budget execution, etc.). By 2013, this computer system was enriched by incorporating the database from satisfaction surveys that participants filled out whenever they completed a workshop.

Contact persons' details:

Professionals from the Department of Programming Coordination, National Youth Institute

José Antonio Silva Montti:jasilva@injuv.gob.cl

Gonzalo Méndez Leiva: gmendez@injuv.gob.cl

Tatiana Zuluaga Orozco:  tzuluaga@injuv.gob.cl