Prince Israel Orekha is Executive Director at Helping Lives International and he is nowayas working on a paper for Youth Dialogue On Peaceful Non Violence on Election and beyond and voters education training for youth/ community leaders because most of the youth that are unemployed  are use as thugs which many lost their lives in previous elections.

-According to your experience, what would be the key to reduce youth  unemployment rate in Nigeria and Gambia?
To empower the youth to embrace entrepreneurship and small medium scale enterprises development, and be self employed, once their skills are developed and they have start up grants and adequately monitored.
Grants  has  being a major challenge for unemployed youth in West Africa

-What should be done to avoid the drain brain and to engage youth?
Urgent measures in the provision good governance models that are workable so that quality education, health and opportunities for gainful employments are created for the youth to enable them compete with their counterparts around the globe. There should be an enabling environment for capable, educated youth to work with this skills and contribute the national development.
Governmental should provide policy that will include young people ability to produce and development their nation.
High Level Corruption should be eradicated, economic exploitation and deprivation on young people should be stop and failed government system should be replaced with new innovation, social  justice economic equality and even development.
Development partners should stop working directly with the government because most of their interventions and support is not directed to the right people(youth) it is only share among cabinet members, families, friends and associate. This translate to a  major challenge of underdevelopment in developing countries since the resource are not translated into the common good of all. youth will continue to move to better place by all means.

-What is the importance of Self-Employment in Nigeria and Gambia?
The importance of Self-Employment in Nigeria and Gambia can’t be overemphasized:
a) Utility maximization: there is a sense of felt need arising from a desire to profitably utilise an available resource/talent for the purpose of meeting that feet need, if youth are self employed they will contribute in no small way to the GDP .
b) Self employment are the backbone of creativity and production because of the undeniable and scientifically verifiable fact that over 65% of all private sectors, non-farm jobs comes from small businesses and this salient fact informed the claim by experts that self employment  are critical to the development of any nation.
c) Self Employment are major means of livelihood  in Nigeria and other West Africa countries, small scale or small medium enterprises are common means by which many are making a living in developing countries. Nigeria for example  is Known as the most populous country in Africa with about 162.47 million people, Nigeria churns out graduates from tertiary institutions with little or no job waiting for them in the labour market. The National Bureau of Statistics said that over 50% of youth in Nigeria are jobless even as the World Bank by some estimates say 56% of Nigerian youth are jobless. The only way our for survival is self employment they jobs government provide does not cover 10% of unemployment rate in the Country.

-What do you think about the Youth Employment Decade project?
Youth Employment Decade project is a global campaign to end unemployment and extreme poverty , this project is timely and good because it will x-ray the problems of unemployment as it concern countries , continent and the world; its negative effects on  youths and national development, which will be presented at the United Nation General assembly  with concrete evidence, recommendations and solutions for implementation .

-How works Helping Lives to promote youth?
Helping Lives International is a passion born out to end poverty by empowering  youth to transform their nations  we have being doing this since 2005 equipping youth with relevant information and training over the years. we connect, equip and empower also organize intercultural program/ exchange program to really see how youth are fairing in other parts of the world in 2009 we did a south to south youth network  the role of the youth in the construction of intercultural society, life skills in ICT and Leadership training , we are planning to setup   Renewable Energy training centre for  youth at risk to undertake training in -Solar Assembly, Installation and Repair in other to  create employment for the youth. Mention but a few… we are in support of Youth Employment Decade project and we will be part of it.