Although youth is a wonderful stage in our life, being young has always had its challenges. Youth means growing up, learning, experiencing a lot of things for the first time. It means building our character and finding out who we are. But it also means feeling misunderstood, unappreciated, and even forgotten. Every generation has had its unique challenges, and for the elderly generation, what we live now may look like a comfortable life. However, they rarely realise that being young today means facing the consequences of several economic crises, climate change, and the fragile state of politics. According to the UNICEF website, Jordan has one of the youngest populations in the world, with 63% of its population under the age of 30. Having such an incredibly young population is an extremely powerful resource that often, as many young people have told me, is not used to its fullest potential. As someone who is not a young Jordanian, I wanted to make sure that an article about this topic was not just simply the result of web research, but it also contained the opinions and the feeling of those young Jordanians.
Not knowing what life is like for people my age in this society, I asked some friends for their opinions. Through their answers, I learnt that, despite living in different realities, some challenges that young people face in 2022 are the same, even if we face them to a different extent, with a different intensity and for different reasons. One of the people I have spoken to told me that people, mostly young people, rarely like their country. This does not happen because they don’t think it’s nice, but sometimes they are so overwhelmed by their problems that they fail to see the positive things that they are surrounded by. The lack of opportunity blinds them to the beauty of their land and people. Most of the young people have, in fact, named unemployment as their biggest issue.
“Jordan has one of the highest unemployment rates in the MENA region – Young people are disproportionately affected by both un- and underemployment. Almost one third (27.2%) of the youth is unemployed, while informal and unpaid family work is pervasive.” This means that every year in Jordan 100,000 young people look for a job and a lot of them end up being disappointed. Some of the main reasons are: “lack of career guidance counselling for students and unemployed people; lack of opportunities to find satisfying work following graduation; the difficulty for individuals of obtaining jobs compatible with their qualifications; the poor wages and working conditions offered by firms; the gap between the skills of graduates and the needs of employers; social and cultural obstacles for the full integration of women into the labour market (families are more selective when choosing workplaces for females); and the wider international and economic situations” (European Training Foundation, 2005: 8-9).
The prospect of not having the future we dream of is a challenge that Jordanians share with the youth of many countries. Most of the young Jordanians have access to good education and a lot of them reach University level. But what happens after that?. Some students have complained that there is a sizeable gap between their university and school studies, making university studies very difficult. Besides that, the available specialisations do not always match the job demand in the country. Therefore a lot of young people find themselves with very high qualifications, but no one to work for. For young people who have a refugee status, the situation is even harder, as not all the specialisations are available to them and there are sectors they cannot work in.
And when you’ve worked so hard for your education, not finding a satisfying job can make you feel really frustrated. Not feeling good enough, not being able to fulfil your dreams, being unsure about your future are feelings that can really harm your mental health. For many people, unemployment can also mean not being able to support a family, or not gaining their independence. Those who find a job position feel often threatened by their work environment, as they may get belittled for their different ideas. This can lead to a loss of motivation and a loss of passion for their job.
All the above are common feelings for many young people all over the world nowadays. Sometimes they can bring us down so much that we lose hope for a better future and finding a way to keep trying is not always simple. Seeing that so many people in the world are in the same situation as us can discourage us, but also comfort us and motivate us. It can push us to help each other out, but above it all, to unite to ask for a change.
Another way that can help us not to lose hope is being open to new opportunities. There are many ways to learn new skills that can make us discover new passions. These new skills and passions can lead us to new opportunities that we never thought could make us happy, but could be the right path for us. It is also important to remember that we have creativity on our side. A lot of our knowledge and qualifications are not limited to one field and we can use creativity to adapt them and create our own opportunities. There are so many inspirational stories of people that created their own job. Who says that we can’t be the next?
Francesca Cuomo
