NEETs are back in the news. What’s a NEET? Not in Employment, Education or Training.
It’s our modern euphemism for unemployed school-leavers. As a group, they’re about to top one million strong, which is clearly bad news.
The government’s solution is to offer them jobs or apprenticeships - then stop their benefits if they don’t take them up. But it’s hard not to sympathise with both the NEETs and with the state on this one.
The recession means fewer private companies need raw recruits; the public sector is broke; and you might end up doing a really terrible or unproductive job. Meanwhile, keeping benefits going costs a fortune.
They’re far from being an army of work-shy scroungers, either. I heard a NEET on the radio this morning talking about how he spent his days surfing job boards and the Job Centre on the web site to find work. It’s heart-breaking to hear productive people who can’t find a job.
If all that sounds a little doomish, then let me tell you a good news story about a NEET I met this morning. Her name is Rosalind Roberts. She knocked at my door and introduced herself as a writer. She is self-published - and wanted to know whether I’d be interested in buying her second book, a slim volume about a girl from Tooting who goes on a journey of self discovery.
Rosalind isn’t using the internet. She wasn’t tweeting news of her book, publishing it “online only” or waiting around for a big publisher. She didn’t even have a copy of the book to give me: she’ll get the presses running when she has enough pre-orders to pay for it. And she certainly isn’t sitting around surfing the web to find work.
Instead, she’s walking door-to-door round South London, explaining herself in a confident and articulate manner. Her book isn’t expensive - she suggests £4.50, but will accept less if you don’t think it’s worth that much. I have a hand-written receipt — yes, hand-written — with her contact details and estimated time for delivery. (Yes, she might be a fraud.
But to produce a sample copy of the novel with her picture on the back was a great way of confirming she wasn’t on the make. And what fraudster would bother hand-writing a receipt for the sake of four quid?)
This struck me as the very model of entrepreneurialism. Rosalind is doing a job she loves, but she’s not afraid to wear out shoe leather to make sure she can keep doing it. She reckoned she’d sold about 6,000 copies of her first book over the last couple of years — so that’s enough to pay the rent and food bills, anyway.
And you never know — if the right person buys one of her books, she may just strike it rich. (In that sense, she’s the perfect antidote to “get famous quick” schemes like the X-Factor.)
Her lessons are simple.
- Do what you love.
- Work hard at it.
- Be friendly and articulate.
- Be creative in finding customers.
- Stay positive.
- Dare to dream.
It’s an inspiring story for all NEETs. We need more Rosalinds and fewer Sir Freds.
(Pic: timmenzies cc2.0)
