THE GREATER SEPIK LABOUR MOBILITY PROGRAM

By Cameron Artango,

Youth Volunteer, The Greater Sepik Labour Mobility Program

My name is Cameron Artango and I am a youth advocate who champions Sexual & Reproductive Health & Rights, Gender Equality, and Meaningful Youth Engagement. My engagements include being a UN Volunteer and intern at Y-PEER Asia Pacific Center in the past, and currently being affiliated with UNICEF East Asia & Pacific’s Young People’s Action Team. My advocacy engagements have allowed me to participate in events worth highlighting, such as being a participant and drafting team member for the regional and sub-regional Call to Action document during the 2022 Asia Pacific Forum on Sustainable Development (APFSD), representing PNG in the 2022 Asia Pacific Youth Forum in Bangkok, and a key organizer, facilitator, and monitoring & evaluating person in charge of the 2022 and 2023 Y-PEER Regional Peer Education Academy Program.

I am also engaged as a volunteer with the Labour Mobility Program of the East Sepik Provincial Government. Under the command of Dr. Preston, my volunteer roles involve accompanying the Labour Mobility candidates and reporting back to Dr. Preston throughout the entire process of preparing the candidates for farm work abroad. Areas of my volunteer work includes (but not limited to) monitoring the participants during their time at their assigned accommodation, capacity-building sessions, while the participants are at their transit accommodation, monitoring the candidates during their visa medical procedures, during the pre-departure briefing sessions, and ensuring that the candidates are comfortable and are ready at the time of their departure to travel out of the country.

I aim to partake in this Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation team to learn about being able to identify both simple and complex problems, identifying the root causes to these problems, creating appropriate, feasible, practical, and sustainable solutions and approaches when addressing these issues. With the PDIA module serving as a guide to analyzing problems, creating solutions, and monitoring these solutions and all the processes over a period of time, I am confident that the PDIA will be beneficial for the volunteer work that I am currently engaged in. I am confident that being a part of the PDIA team in this course provides the opportunity for me to further build my capacity regarding my advocacy engagements.

Our PDIA team, which consists of a group that will be working on issues relating to Youth Unemployment and Pathways, are instrumental leaders whose work involves the youth space and key areas that are instrumental facilitating change, addressing issues of and relating to Youth unemployment, and creating pathways for youth. With my general understanding of the PDIA program, I am confident that the PDIA will help our team with evaluating the current processes that are in place, identifying the key problems within these current processes, further breaking these problems down to identify their root causes, then creating solutions that can best address these root causes, then restructuring these processes with the inclusion of these solutions. The teachings in this PDIA program may also enable us to design processes where sustainability and practicality can easily be measured throughout the program.

Learn more about the PDIA 2 Cohort here.