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Despite the fact that vocational training for young people is now being dealt with as a priority by many governments, the actual places available for training and the situation on the job market are not particularly optimistic in many regions. It is in career planning and preparing the youths that SOS Children's Villages face a particular challenge. Youth from Cap Haitien (Haiti) - Photo: N. Bernd Whilst many countries that are on the periphery of the globalised economic area are making efforts to ensure a general education for all children there is at the same time a lack of financial capacity, economic strength and infrastructure to create appropriate training possibilities for youths leaving school and before they join the workforce. The lack of perspectives and the resulting lack of motivation, of incentive to take their own initiative and unused talents are the results for the individual youths. Youths who have grown up in SOS Children's Villages need special start aids and encouragement. Very often it is just about preventing them falling back into the social poverty trap in which they had previously found themselves. Because of the traumas they experienced in early years and taking into consideration the difficulties with which they have already been burdened as children, it is in no way to be taken for granted that they will later have the skills to be able to look after themselves. Photo: C. Sattlberger In order for the youths to be successfully integrated into the job market it is not only necessary to provide adequate training concepts but also to offer guidance and orientation. This can take the form of group sessions or talking to individuals about their ideas, the setting of realistic goals and forming of strategies to find jobs by the use of job market studies which should sound out the basic career conditions, through the use of contacts to firms, etc. This form of guidance is also important for youths in the western industrialised nations as they struggle greatly when they enter a regulated job and require individual support. The SOS Vocational Training Centres' target group is not only the youths from the SOS Children's Villages. Also youths from the neighbourhood, especially those from socially weak families, can make use of the training possibilities offered by these projects. In view of the fact that in many of the regions where these vocational training centres operate there had been inadequate or non-existent training places for many of the people for years or even decades before, these centres mean that there has been a fundamental improvement in these areas. Youth at the sewing in Isolo (Nigeria) - Photo: L. Rosanwo One of the most disadvantaged social groups in many regions is that of women and girls who are often marginalised: they have no equality when it comes to access to schooling and training facilities and therefore have no economic rights and are ignored in the social decision-making process. Many SOS Vocational Training Centres therefore focus their courses explicitly on providing chances for girls and women to receive training. In specific cultural contexts this is often a challenge and at odds with the traditional gender typification and seemingly unmovable hierarchies. How can, for example, a girl in an Islamic be "allowed" to determine the course of her life herself without excluding herself from her community? In these cases an attempt is made to find a solution that is agreeable to both sides and to carry out work to promote awareness. This is often done in conjunction with the SOS Social Centres.