January 11, 2021
By: Mohamed Kargbo
The Executive Director of the National Youth Services, Mr. Mohamed Onanah Jalloh, has disclosed in an interview that the Ministry of Youth Affairs is set to deploy over 1,000 youth corps for 21 days re-orientation at the Police Training School.
“The difference between National Youth Services and other internship program is the fact that we do not just deploy our graduates to institutions, we also take them to a 21 day camp where they are orientated on the job,” Jalloh said.
He said those candidates are required to exhibit selflessness, volunteerism, nationalism, spirit of national cohesion and patriotism.
He added that during those 21 days they will be taught good work ethics and skills in motivational speech as a requirement for a career journey.
After the 21 days orientation all 1000 corps will be dispatched to different institutions.
It has been revealed that the previous- first batch of young graduate was 200 youth service corps, then increased to 500 now 2021 1,000.
Out of the 1,000, 100 will be deployed as quality teachers in the educational sector. This is done with the view to enabling the young graduates to contribute towards boosting the human resource gap in the sector.
The initiative is undertaken in partnership with a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called Teach Sierra Leone working in concert with the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) and the Ministry of Basic Education and Senior Secondary School.
“When we recruited the first batch of 200 corps, our evaluation proved that 105 were retained by the institutions where we sent them. So because of that, we have encouraged them to form an Alumni Association and that Alumnus is helping us to capture the remaining 95, and it has helped us to track those that have gained employment, while some have created jobs for themselves. Others have also formed Non-Governmental Organizations becoming employers” said Executive Director.
An evaluation of the second batch of 500 is underway to ascertain how many are still retained by their various institutions.
The Executive Director has encouraged the young people to be steadfast, noting that the Ministry of Youth Affairs will continue to ensure that all districts and chiefdoms are represented in the scheme.
The National Youth Service started officially in February 2016 and in December 2016 it got the Presidential Assent and the recruitment of graduates started in September 2018.
