Unemployment is a condition of one who is able to work but unable to find work and now it is recognized that unemployment often arises from factors beyond the control of the individual worker.
Lorraine Ematang is a young lady who hails from Maun who, some few years back went to the University of Botswana to have a diploma in Accounting, and eventually graduating in 2012. She then decided to further her studies to get a BA in finance and graduated last year. She is currently unemployed now but she has been searching for a job while in school because with a diploma, she figured there has to be a way in which she can work part time or even if not part time somehow she could have make it work.
Failure to get a job got her thinking of other means of earning income which is so much needed. Together with her Co-author Molly Thokwana they wrote a book called ‘The Model’.
The Model is sort of manual instruction on how to be a model, in which the book contain two parts, there is a part which focus on modeling in terms of reading contracts, posing and there is a part which is more for a person lifestyle, diet choices, fashion wise, skin care and that part can appear for non models as well.
“Our target is everyone even though the book is specifically for models. The youth, people who are interested in fashion and people who are interested in making better life choices, just everyone across the board,” says Ematang.
Given the history or culture of Batswana, not having interest in reading; she said their strategy is why they came with a clutch bag that comes along with a book. “We were open to kind of riling people that is why we even picked African print as its eye catching even on the book cover there is a bit of African print to sharp colours, something that will pull people in,” Lorraine Ematang says.
The Maun born continued to add that she remains hopeful that it is her first of many books that she would write. She says even though ‘The Model’ is a non-fiction, she considers herself a fiction writer and a poet as well. In that case there will be a lot of short stories and poetry from her.
Ematang encouraged youth to be always on constant thoughts on how they can use whatever little they have as job hunting on its own is a long and tedious process, “so they must always look on ways that can diversify themselves on talent they have and putting themselves out there; because obviously they have something that they went to school for, that they have been trained for, and the natural talent that God gave them or those that are good with hands that is people who are handy can make two cell, there are those who come from farming families that also something they can look into”.
She said youth should not look into their brain power and rely only on that only, they should stay active and do something until they can get a job.
“Comrades hold on, do not give up, be strong and have faith as job hunting is one of the difficult processes especially if you are independent and do not like to lean too much on other people” she said.
Ematang also mentioned that the government and private sector companies should have faith in their youth as there have so many innovative ideas that are out of the box, that do not necessarily translate when you say them in words, it is hard for someone to believe that it is possible that it can be done.
“Have a mentorship and traineeship attitude when it comes to the young people, do not put somebody in a 2 year internship programme only for that 2 years to end and then you leave them and put them out there in the very same market they were trying to run away from. If you are going to put somebody in a traineeship, have the prospect of actually absorbing them and giving them a position within your organization, something that is permanent, that can bring a financial breakthrough or career wise,” she said.
She also suggested that maybe if more youth could be in leadership position, there could understand more platforms of the youth more than the person who is older, who will not understand the idea of a young person unlike where it will be a youth in leadership as they will understand the mental capability to kind of see the vision of whatever they want to say, in that way maybe change could be seen.
