Increase 7.5% federal budget to serve young people

Carolina Gomez Mena

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, August 14, 2022, p. 8

In the current federal administration, the investment made to serve young people is historic. Since 2019 there was a substantial increase in the percentage allocated to the sector, said Guillermo Santiago Rodríguez, director of the Mexican Youth Institute (Imjuve).

“During Calderón’s six-year term there was an investment of 2.5 percent of the Federal Expenditure Budget (PEF), with Peña Nieto it was 3.5 and with President López Obrador it increased to 7.5 percent, but more resources are not only invested : the way in which care is also changed; now it’s direct.

This year, more than 485 billion pesos are channeled through a network of programs, including Youth Building the Future, the Beni-to Juárez Scholarship system, the Benito Juárez universities and the Sembrando Vida program. It is an investment that has never been seen before.

Santiago Rodríguez pointed to the day still there is a long way to go, but it is a great advanceadding that now also changed the visionbecause now “the youths that were historically left behind are taken into account.

“With Youth Building the Future, work experience, economic support and the possibility of being hired are provided.

It is the largest program in Latin America, both in terms of budget and number of young people served. The approach is to train them for work, to gain experience. One of the big problems that we have had is that we are told that we need experience, but we are not given the opportunity to acquire it.

The program It provides that experience, in addition to an economic income above the minimum wage, it also allows them to locate work spaces to perform. Many have been able to stay both in the public administration and in the private initiative or civil society organizations.

Regarding the Benito Juárez universities, he said that they are located in municipalities with high rates of marginalization or rural municipalities, in which it was very difficult to enter the university.

The scheme supports those who had not had the opportunity, both geographically and economically, to access the university, while the courses that are taught are appropriate to the region where they are located, this guarantees that what they have learned will serve to generate income for themselves and their families in the area that they live in. inhabit.

Imjuve also works on emancipation processes. The director explained that the economic situation, which derives from the world situation, has made young people take longer to leave the family home and that Mexico City is the entity in which they leave their homes at an older age, where on average they do it above 29 years.

He explained that this is largely due to the rapacious real estate business has made real estate more expensive in big cities, so buying one is impossible.

Along with other dependencies, such as Infonavit, Imjuve has established working groups to find mechanisms that allow us to bring young people closer to decent housing programs and thus begin their emancipation.