The demographic bonus with a high proportion of young generation which is predicted to happen in several years ahead will give many benefits to the national development. However, the current condition shows there are many productive age people who are still less productive with the high number of unemployment up to 15.38% of the youth which totals 61.68 million people while many job opportunities are fulfilled by foreign workforce. On the other hand, the capability of Indonesian youth is equivalent with that of the foreign workforce.
“There are 74,183 foreign workforce in Indonesia who have positions which are actually can be filled by Indonesian youth. Truthfully, the capability of Indonesian youth is equivalent with that of the foreign workforce as shown by the high number of Indonesian youth that are admitted by foreign countries,” said Acting Deputy for Youth Development Division, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Jonni Mardiza,l on Thursday (12/10).
Those statements were delivered by Jonni during the seminar entitled Indonesian Youth Socio-entrepreneur. This event is a part of series of competition entitled Indonesian Youth Socio-entrepreneur (SOPREMA) which was held by Youth Studies Centre (YOUSURE) Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM, collaborating with Ministry of Youth and Sports as well as Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI).
In the occasion, Jonni said in order to reduce the level of unemployment of the young generation, Ministry of Youth and Sports develops several entrepreneurship programs which include training and capital access support, such as 1,000 Capital Support, E-Commerce Training, Organic Farming Training and Manufacture Industry Programming Training.
“In addition, currently we strengthen the youth communities throughout Indonesia which have shown their commitment in socio-entrepreneurship, thus we give assistance and monitoring to their business sustainability,” he added.
The cooperation with UGM through SOPREMA, according to Jonni, also encourages the goals of Ministry of Youth and Sports in filtering the prospective young entrepreneurs who have high potential in establishing business and not only profit oriented but also can contribute to the society by providing job opportunities and other benefits.
Regarding the programs on manufacture industrial sector, UGM Vice-Rector of Research and Community Service Division, drg. Ika Dewi Ana, M.Kes., Ph.D. said as a socio-entrepreneur university, UGM has been developing entrepreneurship programs, including Innovative Academy, thus the students from various faculties can collaborate in developing products with assistance from Industry, such as Google. Ika hopes this event can become one of the realizations of UGM’s missions which is sustaining the national sovereignty.
Aside from the main speech from Deputy of Ministry of Youth and Sports, this seminar also presented several keynote speakers, including Senior Vice President of BRI, Agus Rachmadi, President Commissioner of Kumparan Media, Budiono Darsono, and President of 4.0 Komunitas Tangan di Atas, Mustofa Romdloni.
Agus Rachmadi said entrepreneurship can be done by anyone, even the uneducated people as long as they obtain supports from the right banking. Meanwhile, Budiono Darsono reminds the Indonesian young generation to not easily give up in establishing their business, because successful business was born from a tough and creative entrepreneur. On the other hand, Mustofa Romdloni emphasizes the importance of socio-entrepreneur to build a network with other entrepreneurs, thus they can learn from each other.