poverty

Two Projects Turning Around Unemployment

WE HAVE become accustomed to bad news: faltering banks, a double-dip recession, once-firmly established businesses folding up, large scale redundancies in the public sector and the resultant increase in unemployment, house repossessions, homelessness and child poverty. And that doesn’t include the unrecorded psychological damage inflicted by the loss of jobs and the uncertainty, even hopelessness, it brings both to individuals and family life. Political parties wrangle about new benefits introduced and many accuse the government of letting down the poor.

“Work doesn’t seem to exist anymore,” said Salome, 21, one of a million unemployed young people aged 16-24. Salome left college at 18 and has been...