On Friday April 1st, 14 YIN members from The Philippines and Vietnam met online to discuss "how to engage and advocate for Youth inclusion"
The session started by sharing the YIN Key numbers in the SEA part of our network for this first trimester of 2022, showing a deep commitment of the companies for the Youth during these first months.
The floor was then given to our 2 guest speakers, Gauthier LAGASSE, Co-Founder and CEO of Belgo (YIN Vietnam) and Nadège IFF, Sustainable Positive Impact Leader at Decathlon (YIN Philippines). They could share to the audience, some of their best tips for advocacy and team member empowerment that led to successful actions and many Youth recruitments.
Gauthier LAGASSE could let us know about how the team members of the several pubs they have in Ho Chi Minh, got involved in Youth inclusion, so that until 20% of the employees were from excluded backgrounds.
Belgo through the years, realized different activities for the Youth, especially with LP4Y and then with REACH, starting from company visits to OJTs and effective recruitments. To advocate efficiently among team members, the management team and collaborators were first involved in Youth training so that they could meet and learn from each other. They were then associated to internship projects to support the overall initiative and the Youth were integrated as part of team members, in the restaurants and kitchens.
This year, Belgo welcomed as soon as the covid situation allowed it, Young students in all their stores for 3 month programs, showing the impressive commitment of the company, despite all difficulties. Belgo is now willing to go even further, developing even more initiatives in 2022, empowering their employees and the Youth, for a global sustainable impact on all aspects.
Nadège IFF, Sustainable Positive Impact Leader at Decathlon, explained the consideration of Youth inclusion as part of the global Decathlon project, since this is in the DNA of Decathlon to act to make the change. Decathlon is using a "funneling process" where Youth are first introduced to Decathlon environment and culture with company visits and training, before acceding to an internship recruitment process. A successful process and integration system followed by 23 Youth in 2021 and already by 17 Youth in 2022, who started their 8 weeks OJT inside 4 Decathlon stores this month of March.
To achieve such impressive results, employees from all stores are involved in different activities with the Youth and Decathlon Philippines defined global KPIs related to integration (5% of team mates should come from excluded backgrounds). For initiative management, team mates are selected upon motivation, representing point of contact in each store and are closely followed by Decathlon sustainability team.
More details on the testimonies will be available to members
After these testimonies, the members could exchange around advocacy and expressed different important points such like:
> The management team should show the example in term of commitment for change, an important signal for employees and important push for commitment
> A project leader, to motivate the team, should first organize an activity to sensitize to Youth inclusion. It can be a sensitization session, the visit of a center welcoming Youth or any professional activity, but this is highly important for the collaborators to understand the importance and impact of this small commitment to the Youth, an interaction that will give to both, meaningful benefits of different natures, and the incentive for the team member, to commit even more to Youth inclusion.
Thank you to all the participants and looking forward to (e-)meeting very soon again
