Cautata Village Opens Bakery to Empower Youths
The door of opportunity has just opened in Cautata with the village opening its bakery and setting its sight to venture into eco tourism in the future.
Cautata Village could be the first in the nation to have sustainable development goals and through a number of projects which have been made possible for the village. The bakery which cost more than $105,000 was made possible through $85,000 from the Government and $20,000 from the community. Cautata Village Development Committee chairman Akuila Sovanivalu said the bakery was set up because of the high number of youths dropping out of school. He said the bakery will provide full-time employment and generate other revenue ideas.
“Youths are 40 per cent of the total population. Of this, 60 to 70 per cent are school dropouts. This happened because a lot of them are not good academically,” he said.
“But we want the youth to know that development does not stop there.
“We are going to try and do an ecotourism venture.”
Ironically the bakery now sits on the same site which once used to house the Cautata Bus Company. The village owned company ceased operation in 1996.
Mr Sovanivalu said because of the experience with the bus company, the villagers had associated business with failure.
“This is slowly changing and we hope that this does change for the better. The bakery employs 10 people on a full-time basis and it follows the Employment Relations Act. The superannuation for the staff is paid as well,” he said. Cautata was partnering with Nadave Technical College to train youths in areas of engineering, fibre glass manufacturing and usage of natural resources.