A total of 24,234 youths benefited from the Yellow Ribbon Project last year, which was a pioneer project to help youths at risk rebuild their lives after serving time for their offences.

Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman said the initiative involved collaboration between the ministry and the private sector in providing youths with opportunities such as skills training, entrepreneurship, marketability and awareness.

“There are many types of assistance available to ensure that these youths recover after making a mistake as the government is responsible for helping them to move forward.

“Therefore, I urge more private companies to come forward to collaborate and help these youths at risk to serve the community without being burdened by their past mistakes,” he said after launching the second edition of the project at Spacerubix in Kuala Lumpur today.

The ministry, with the cooperation of the Home Ministry, launched the Yellow Ribbon Project in October 2018 to give a second chance to former prisoners and former inmates of rehabilitation centres, especially youths.

There are five main clusters under the project, namely for skills, sports, entrepreneurship, marketability and awareness campaign.

For the second edition, Syed Saddiq said, the ministry has introduced seven new initiatives, on personality and identity development, intensive skills training, intensive entrepreneurship training, job opportunities through sports, programme work achievements, community support system advocacy, and 12 project strategy promotion plans.

- Bernama