In East Timor it helps to be creative if you want a job. With little in the way of industry and few formal jobs on offer, people are looking for alternative ways to create their own employment and generate their own incomes.
In the small coastal village of Kamalehoru near Dili, a small group of 14 men and women have started a small dried fish business and, so far, it looks promising.
Early every morning, the men go out in their boat to catch fish. When they return, they keep some fish aside to sell fresh and then hand the remainder over to the women for washing and cleaning. Once the fish are gutted, the women coat them with salt and lay them out in a plastic drying shed on the beach for two days. When the fish are dried sufficiently, the women put them into plastic bags ready for sale. A bag of five medium sized fish will fetch about US$3. Smaller fish will attract about US$1.
This business looks straightforward. But it may not have gotten on its feet without support from the Youth Employment Promotion Program (YEPP), jointly funded by Australia and the Government of East Timor and managed in partnership with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The program provides training, short-term job opportunities and career counselling to help young men and women improve their employment prospects.
'There are no industries in most parts of East Timor so we need to explore opportunities for self-employment,' says Fernando Encarnacao from the ILO. 'We go to remote areas and survey the local resources. We help people identify what they could do to create jobs and how they might use microfinance to help them.' Since 2008, YEPP has enabled about 5,000 men and women to take part in different types of skills development, increasing their chances of finding work.
'In the case of the dried fish in Kamalehoru, we organised for a company to give the men and women five days training in how to prepare the fish for drying and building the drying shed. The same training company signed a contract with the group to buy all their dried fish as long as the fish meet quality and quantity standards. The people now make about US$200 a month which is a lot more than they made before. Packing the fish in plastic also means no flies and no smell.
'The business works well for the women because they can take turns preparing the fish and also look after their children. The hygiene lessons they learned during the training has a spill-over effect at home. And if the group needs extra money to make any repairs to their boat or their drying shed they can apply for a microfinance loan. They've made enough to be able to make the repayments,' says Fernando.
Olivia de Jesus is part of the group and is now an accomplished dried fish processor. 'We used to dry fish but we'd only put it out in the sun. This process is more hygienic and we make more money than we did before.' The next step is to expand the program to other villages and create a network of dried fish producers. 'Eventually the people might be able to grind the fish, bottle it and sell it to communities in the mountainous areas,' says Fernando. 'This would introduce fish into their diets which would be good for their health and would create more employment in Kamalehoru.'