Why Friends Career Center Exists: The Numbers Behind Our Work
Across Rwanda and in immigrant communities in Canada, young people are doing everything “right” and still finding the system stacked against them. Friends Career Center was born out of that reality—not out of abstract sympathy, but out of hard numbers and real lives that sit behind them.
In Rwanda, youth unemployment has hovered in the mid-teens to low twenties in recent years, consistently higher than the overall unemployment rate and above many global averages. For thousands of young people finishing school, this means that even after years of effort, there is no clear path into dignified work—only informal jobs, underemployment, or long seasons of waiting. FCC’s mentorship, vocational training, and entrepreneurship programmes are designed to interrupt that pattern by helping young people build marketable skills, networks, and the confidence to start their own ventures when jobs don’t exist.
But work is only one part of the story. Mental health data in Rwanda show that more than one in four young people live with significant psychological difficulties, including trauma, anxiety, and depression, often linked to poverty, family stress, and the long shadow of national history. In Canada, research paints a similarly troubling picture: youth mental health has been worsening, and newcomer and marginalised youth are especially likely to fall through the cracks of formal support systems. FCC’s circles, art-based healing spaces, and mentorship relationships give young people spaces where they can be honest about what they are carrying and begin to rebuild a sense of safety, belonging, and hope.
Health statistics add another layer. Rwanda has driven HIV rates down impressively at a national level, yet adolescents and young adults still account for a worrying share of new infections, and stigma remains a heavy burden. That stigma does not show up in tables and graphs, but it shapes how young people see their futures. Through Ubugeni Bwomora—“Art That Heals”—HIV-positive youth use painting, storytelling, and community to move from silence and shame towards self-acceptance and leadership.
For immigrant youth in Canada, labour market studies show a consistent pattern: even when they arrive with strong skills or high motivation, they are more likely than their Canadian-born peers to be unemployed or concentrated in low-wage, low-security jobs. Language barriers, non-recognition of qualifications, and a lack of professional networks all play a role. FCC’s Canadian programmes respond directly to this by pairing young immigrants with mentors, offering tailored career guidance, and integrating mental health support so that they are not navigating these transitions alone.
When you put all of these numbers together—unemployment rates, mental health burdens, HIV trends, immigrant labour gaps—it can feel overwhelming. Friends Career Center is, in many ways, a refusal to accept those statistics as destiny. Every mentee who lands a job, every young woman who launches a business, every HIV-positive teenager who starts to see their life as worth living, and every immigrant youth who finds their footing in a new country becomes a quiet data point in a different story. That is the work FCC is doing every day: shifting the numbers by standing with the young people behind them.
