Jair Polo, 19, dreamed of being a famous soccer player in his hometown of Cartagena, Colombia. But after he was injured and then rejected for admission by a university, he would come home and lie idly in his room for days. “So many of my friends were into drugs, prostitution, and fighting in the streets,” he says.

Like many young people growing up in poor communities across Latin America, Adriana and Jair desperately needed jobs to support themselves and their families. But rising unemployment, particularly among youth, left them with few opportunities.

Today Adriana and Jair have a future. They are among 12,000 unemployeed young people in Latin America and the Caribbean receiving information technology training, internships, and job search assistance through program called entra 21.

The program, which is being funded with the help of a US$10 million grant from the IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), is administered by the International Youth Foundation (IYF). The foundation is required to match the MIF investment dollar for dollar, which it is doing by assembling a group of donors that include local businesses, global companies such as Lucent Technologies and Merrill Lynch, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Launched in 2001, entra 21 is working to reduce youth unemployment in 15 countries. In Bolivia, where up to 90 percent of young people are jobless, the program is training some 500 disadvantaged youth in information technology as well as administrative and management skills. In Bahia, Brazil, the program is training 480 youths to work in the tourist industry. In Argentina, some 450 youth are doing community service work as well as learning computer skills.

All of the programs train youth in information technology (IT), place their trainees in internship programs and assist in job placement. Participants can choose from a wide range of IT skills, including graphic design, health systems, computer repair and maintenance, office administration, and computer networking. Each program makes a study of local businesses’ needs to ensure that the IT training is relevant.

Entra 21 participants also receive training in “employability,” which includes workshops in personal development, communications, teamwork, and creating a “life plan.” Some of the entra 21 programs promote entrepreneurship. In Medellín, Colombia, participants who want to start their own businesses learn to draw up a business plan. Those with the most promising ideas receive mentoring and compete for small loans to help get their business off the ground. Learning how to start and run a business is an invaluable skill in a region where such a large portion of economic activity is in the informal sector.

Almost all of the entra 21 participants who have completed their training have been placed in internships. The dropout rate, which was initially projected at 20 percent, rarely reaches half that, thanks to a highly effective selection process.

Job placement is one reason for entra 21’s success, according to Gabriel Jaime Arango, vice president at Comfenalco, an NGO in Medellín that offers training through the program. He adds that the program also has a social dimension. “Too often,” he says, “poverty is equated with criminality. But now businesses are recognizing that even though these young people come from poor neighborhoods, they can be responsible. There is no need to discriminate against them,” he says.

While is appears that the programs will meet their goal of 40 percent job placement, it is too early to predict the final success rate as most participants have not yet completed their training and internships.

But entra 21 has already had an impact. Ruth Dary Ortiz, a 21-year-old Colombian who was forced to leave her village due to the violence, recently told an audience, “This is not just a program, this is my real opportunity in life.”

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